Von Scott v. Fannie Mae
Originally posted on September 26, 2025
Von Scott v. Fannie Mae
In Von Scott v. Fannie Mae (Maine 2023), a case heard in State of Maine Superior Court, Cumberland, Docket No. RE-2023-037, the Defendant Fannie Mae made a Motion for Sanctions against pro se litigant Von Scott. Fannie Mae’s motion and Von Scott’s response to the motion brought to light the misuse of AI via hallucinated case citations.
Although Fannie Mae initially moved for sanctions on the basis that Mr. Scott knowingly filed this action without grounds to support his claims, additional grounds for Fannie Mae’s motion became apparent to Fannie Mae and the Court after receipt of Mr. Scott’s opposition to Fannie Mae’s Motion to Dismiss.3 In Mr. Scott’s opposition, he cites and quotes several cases. Although the citations are mostly in correct format, with a case name, reporter volume and page number, and year, the citations do not refer to any case that the Court can locate. Searching legal databases for the text of the quotations returns no results. In other words, the cases and quotations are fabricated.
The Court is aware of recent incidents in the legal community involving filings generated in whole or in part by artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, that incorporate case citations and quotations which do not, in fact, exist. In the Court’s view, blind reliance on artificial intelligence does not excuse misrepresentation of the law to the Court. Although this is especially true for attorneys, who certainly ought to know better than to submit a filing without verifying citations, pro se litigants must be held to the same standard. See Dep’t of Env’t Prat. v. Woodman, 1997 ME 164, ‘[ 3 n.3, 697 A.2d 1295.
Penalty: “The Court will order Plaintiff to pay Defendant’s costs, expenses, and attorney fees incurred in connection with the Motion to Dismiss and Motion for Sanctions.”
Conclusion
I will repeat a frequent point—most or all cases I have found thus far involving hallucinated cases were first exposed by the opposing counsel. This means attorneys who do not intend to use generative AI may still benefit from receiving training to understand generative AI, if the attorneys or self-represented litigants on the other side of a case are misusing ChatGPT or similar AI tools.