Shahid v. Esaam

What happened

After a divorce decree was entered, the wife petitioned to reopen the case and set aside the final judgment. The trial court denied her petition. On appeal she argued that the ruling denying her petition relied on case law that does not exist.

The Court of Appeals agreed that the ruling was defective. Its opinion states that "the trial court relied on two fictitious cases in its order denying her petition." The court observed that the order "purports to have been prepared by Husband's attorney, Diana Lynch." The husband's filings had the same problem. His brief on appeal contained 11 bogus citations out of 15, and his response to the petition in the trial court had also cited cases that do not exist. The court wrote that "the irregularities in these filings suggest that they were drafted using generative AI."

What the court did

The Court of Appeals stated: "We are troubled by the citation of bogus cases in the trial court's order. As the reviewing court, we make no findings of fact as to how this impropriety occurred." Because the ruling rested on authority that could not be reviewed, the court vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a new hearing on the wife's motion to set aside the decree.

The husband's attorney had also moved in the appellate court for an award of attorney fees. The court treated that motion as frivolous and imposed a $2,500 penalty on counsel. It did not sanction the trial judge and made no finding about who produced the text of the order.

Where it stands

The case returned to the trial court for a new hearing. No reporting on the outcome of that hearing was found as of September 2026.

The pattern it shows, a proposed order adopted with a party's unverified citations intact, recurs in later matters. In Payne v. State in 2026, the Supreme Court of Georgia vacated a trial court order prepared by a prosecutor and directed that its replacement not be prepared by counsel for either party.

The obligation it engaged

The conduct engaged Clause 3 of the Expert Record Standard, independent authority. Citations entered an order of the court on the authority of a drafting source that no one confirmed against the reported cases. A proposed order is a party's work product until the court adopts it. Once it is signed, every citation in it carries the court's authority, and the check that would have caught the problem is a check of each case against a reporter.

It also engaged Clause 2, non-delegation. The appellate court could not review the reasoning because the reasoning rested on authority that did not exist. For a professional who prepares text for another person to adopt, whether an order for a judge or a report for counsel, the lesson is the same: the person who signs has adopted every assertion in it, and the person who drafts it should hand over only what has been checked.

Sources

• Court of Appeals of Georgia · June 30, 2025
  Shahid v. Esaam, No. A25A0196 (opinion)
• The Register · July 8, 2025
  Georgia court vacates order citing AI-invented caselaw
• Reason (The Volokh Conspiracy) · July 3, 2025
  Georgia Trial Court Cites Likely AI-Hallucinated Cases (Possibly Borrowed from Party's Filing)

What could not be confirmed

The Court of Appeals made no finding on how the fictitious citations entered the order or which tool, if any, was used. The trial court county, trial judge and outcome on remand were not identified in the sources opened.