AZ Court of Appeals: Citing fake AI-generated cases can get you sanct…

Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that lawyers and self-represented litigants can be sanctioned for citing AI-generated fake cases, regardless of intent. The decision marks the first published Arizona appellate opinion on generative AI use in legal filings and establishes that reliance on AI does not excuse compliance with court rules. If you're building AI legal research or brief-writing tools, your product is now your customer's liability. Courts have decided that 'I used AI' is not a defence—the person filing bears the cost of verifying every citation, which means your tool either embeds verification or it doesn't ship to lawyers at all.