The ABAJournal.com reported that “A federal judge has tossed a case after berating an attorney for misusing artificial intelligence and using extensive quotes from Ray Bradbury’s book “Fahrenheit 451.”” The February 9, 2026 article entitled “Frustrated judge tosses case with fake AI citations, references to Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’” (https://tinyurl.com/4d9by9zm) included these comments about the case (https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Flycatcher-v-Affable-Avenue-Opinion-and-Order-2-5-26.pdf):
References to author Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian book Fahrenheit 451, fake citations and “out-of-left-field” references to ancient libraries has prompted a New York federal judge to terminate a case because of a lawyer’s repeated misuse of artificial intelligence.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York wrote in an order last week that the “extraordinary” sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations, Ars Technica reports.
One of those filings was “noteworthy,” Failla said, “for its conspicuously florid prose.”
Where some of Feldman’s filings contained grammatical errors and run-on sentences, this filing seemed glaringly different stylistically, the story noted.
Anyone surprised?
First published at https://www.vogelitlaw.com/blog/fake-ai-cites-ends-a-case-in-new-york