FJL v TGO (Gauteng Division, Johannesburg)

What happened

FJL v TGO, case number 2025/220239, arose in family litigation; the parties are identified only by initials. An acting judge of the Gauteng Division granted the respondent an order under section 18(3) of the Superior Courts Act, which allows an order to operate while an appeal is pending, and refused the appellant leave to appeal. The appellant appealed that order to a full bench.

Shortly before the hearing, the appellant filed a note identifying discrepancies in the acting judge's judgment. At the hearing, both sides agreed that the eleven discrepancies were accurately described, a senior librarian of the Johannesburg Society of Advocates had confirmed them, and the respondent's junior counsel had not supplied any of the incorrect references, although the judgment recorded in places that she had. Some cases carried wrong citations. Some quotations merged passages from different cases. One case, "Lubbe v Volkswagon SA [2023] 4 All SA 289 (C)", cited five times, does not exist.

What the court did

The appeal was dismissed with costs on July 31, 2026. Writing for himself and Mahosi J, Wright J held the section 18(3) order correct on the merits and declined to address artificial intelligence: "I do not find it necessary to enter the lists about AI and I refrain from doing so." Both parties had agreed that whatever the acting judge did, the order was not a nullity.

Opperman J concurred separately and addressed the discrepancies. She wrote that "The most plausible explanation, certainly for the fictitious Lubbe reference, is that it is the product of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but stated: "I make no finding on whether AI was used." She declined to discuss the errors with the acting judge privately, because explanations belong before the body that regulates acting judges. After analyzing whether that body is the Judicial Conduct Committee or the Legal Practice Council, she concluded the Council's jurisdiction runs concurrently and wrote that she intended to forward the judgment to its chairperson, adding that what she recorded "does not constitute findings by this Court but are observations to be investigated."

Where it stands

The judgment is marked reportable and of interest to other judges. The outcome of any Legal Practice Council investigation was not located as of October 8, 2026. The concurrence observes that it could find no reported South African authority in which a judge or acting judge had been found to have used AI in reasoning, and notes that acting judges in the division are cautioned in their induction against relying on AI for citations or case summaries.

FJL v TGO is a careful counterpart to the Indian matters in this record, Pooja Ramesh Singh and Gadiya v. Union of India, where the tainted decision was set aside. Here the decision was upheld on its merits, and the question of how the errors arose was sent to a regulator rather than decided in the judgment.

The obligation it engaged

The conduct engages Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, in the hands of a decision-maker. Every discrepancy listed was checkable, and a librarian checked them.

The concurrence's restraint is also instructive for experts. It identified the most plausible explanation and still declined to find it, because the person whose method was in question had not been heard. An expert asked to say whether a document was produced by AI faces the same discipline: plausibility is not a finding, and the opinion has to rest on what can be shown.

Sources

• High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division (copy hosted for the AI Hallucination Cases database) · July 31, 2026
  Judgment, Case No. 2025/220239

What could not be confirmed

No court found that AI was used. The acting judge is not named in the judgment and was not heard. Whether the Legal Practice Council opened an investigation was not located.