Refugee claimants strike out after Federal Court says their legal claim is AI fakery

“Citing fake cases in court filings is an abuse of process and is tantamount to making a false statement to the Court,” the Federal Court judge wrote in his judgment. Photo by Hyungcheol Park/Postmedia/File

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A claim for refugee protection in Canada by a family of three has been rejected because their appeal was apparently generated by artificial intelligence tools and riddled with fake cases and false legal arguments.

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The Federal Court issued a sharp rebuke of a court filing that challenges an Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decision that refused asylum to the trio, with Justice Roger Lafrenière saying the appeal is riddled with nonsense and calling it “an abusive document.”

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A lawyer representing the failed refugee claimants had requested the court accept the late filing of its documentation in their appeal. The IRB had previously found the asylum claim “manifestly unfounded.”

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Lafrenière said the mistake over the filing date might have been excused until he saw the arguments relied on “fictitious citations” and “wholly inaccurate references to legal precedents.”

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Lafrenière said the lawyer’s arguments cited case law from five prior Federal Court cases. The “cases,” however, cannot be found at the citations provided, nor do the citations to real cases make the argument the filing claims.

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“The Applicants’ Memorandum of Argument is replete with inaccurate and, dare one say, misleading arguments,” Lafrenière wrote in a decision released Monday. In some of the cases, the precedent cited says the opposite of what the filing claims.

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For example, the document cites two cases in support of an argument over judicial discretion. “However, nothing of the sort is stated in either of the two cases,” wrote Lafrenière. The document also gives one citation as being found in paragraphs 28–33 of a judgment that has only 10 paragraphs, and it is on an irrelevant subject.

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“Citing fake cases in court filings is an abuse of process and is tantamount to making a false statement to the Court,” Lafrenière wrote in his judgment. “In addition, making misleading arguments to the Court violates professional ethics and counsel’s fundamental legal duty of candor.”

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Government lawyers flagged concerns over the written material of the three applicants. The parties were given an opportunity to answer the allegations but failed to respond, court said.

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“I can only conclude that AI was used in the drafting of the Applicants’ Memorandum of Argument without careful human judgment being applied to the output,” said Lafrenière.

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“AI tools promise efficiency; however, their indiscriminate use in drafting legal arguments constitutes a pernicious threat to the integrity of the judicial process. Fabricated case citations distort and corrupt the case law. Superficial fluency also creates an illusion of competence and genuine legal reasoning that masks underlying inaccuracies. In addition, inaccurate legal arguments shaped by AI also results in the waste of scarce resources, both judicial and those of the opposing party.