Canary Islands court fines lawyer for using 48 fake AI-generated rulings

The High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJ de Canarias) has fined a lawyer 450 euros for including 48 non-existent Supreme Court rulings and a fictitious report from the General Council of the Judiciary in an appeal. The lawyer attributed these references to ChatGPT but failed to verify the data against official sources.

The court noted that the citations included specific case numbers, dates, and identifiers that could not be located in the official Spanish jurisprudence database, Cendoj. While the court did not find evidence of malicious intent, it characterized the error as a result of blind trust in generative AI.

The 450-euro fine was calculated to be approximately half the annual cost of a reliable, specialized legal AI subscription. The ruling serves as a pedagogical warning to the legal profession, emphasizing that AI tools do not replace the professional responsibility of a lawyer to verify primary legal sources.