By Bill Hartzer · Published · How this site is researched
Checkability before adoption. Before adopting any output, the expert identifies the specific thing against which it would be checked. Where no such thing can be identified, the output is not adopted.
A test applied at the moment of adoption
Adoption (the moment a piece of output is taken into the work as the expert's own) is the point after which an assertion stands on the expert's authority, whatever produced it. This clause asks one question just before that point: what, specifically, would this be checked against? "I would verify it" is not an answer. A page of the production, a standard obtained from the issuing body in the revision operative on the relevant date, a recomputation in the spreadsheet, a transcript page and line: those are answers.
If a specific, obtainable thing comes to mind, the tool is working as an instrument, and the check is a mechanical step that can be performed, described and logged. If the honest answer is that the output seemed right, matched the expert's understanding, or agreed with what the model said earlier, it is entering on the tool's authority and stays out. The test does not require knowing how a model works, only what would settle the question.
Green, yellow and red work
The question sorts tasks into the book's three categories. Green work is checkable against material already in hand: optical character recognition where the page images are kept, deduplication by hash, timestamp normalization. Yellow work needs something obtained from outside, as when a model names the governing standard and the expert then buys it and reads the section. Red work returns no answer at all, because the output would be the expert's judgment; that belongs to Clause 2. The pre-use checklist puts this question before every use.
Readings the clause does not support
The clause concerns adoption, not reading. It does not require exhaustive verification of every response before it is even considered. Nor is it satisfied by asking a second model, or the same one again: a cross-check is useful only if its own basis can be examined, which is the point the entry on Matter of Weber makes about a damages expert's Copilot cross-check. A check against memory does not qualify either. It is the companion of Clause 3: this clause names the check before adoption, and independent authority requires that the check actually be made against the source.
Where the record applies it
In State of Washington v. Puloka, the defense offered a bystander video enhanced with AI software. The frames the model added by prediction could not be traced to anything in the original file, and after a Frye hearing (an inquiry into general acceptance in the relevant scientific community) the trial court excluded the enhanced clip. The case was tried on the original footage. The order is unpublished, and the account rests on press and practitioner reporting.
The Cour d'appel de Rouen, RG 25/01677 (Copilot analysis) reversed a summary order on the strength of dye tracing, site reports and professional technical opinions, and said expressly that a Copilot analysis of a contractor's letter was not among the evidence it relied on. The only thing that analysis could be checked against was the letter, which the court already had.
Concord Music Group v. Anthropic (Chen declaration) shows a check that failed. The underlying article was real and had been found by a person, but when counsel used Claude.ai to format the reference it returned a wrong title and authors, and a manual citation check did not catch the error. The magistrate judge struck the paragraph and imposed no sanctions.
The rules it sits beside
The Standard does not restate any court rule and does not depend on one. In United States federal courts, Federal Rule of Evidence 702 asks whether a method can be tested; output adopted without knowing what would check it cannot be. Other systems ask the same questions in their own terms, and the matters below include tribunals in several of them.
Matters in the record that engaged Clause 4
55 of the 103 matters in AI in the Courtroom engaged this clause. Each is listed with the sentence from its entry that says how. The mapping describes conduct, not blame, and each entry sets out the facts it rests on.
Expert witnesses and AI
- Avergil v. Yaakov “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, explains why the court could act at once: most citations were specific enough to test, and when tested they failed.”
- Bard Port Catheter MDL (El-Ghannam ChatGPT challenge)
- LeDoux v. Outliers, Inc. “It also bears on Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- Keratoconus Entitlement Review, 2026 CanLII 107034 “Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption, is the clause the panel's method illustrates.”
- Riddle Aggregates (Tax Court rebuttal expert)
- Cour d'appel de Rouen, RG 25/01677 (Copilot analysis) “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, explains why.”
- Biton v. The National Insurance Institute “It also engages Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- In re Valsartan MDL (Dr. William Sawyer) “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is also engaged.”
- Concord Music Group v. Anthropic (Chen declaration) “It also engaged Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- Kohls v. Ellison “It also engaged Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- Matter of Weber “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, applies as well: a cross-check is only useful if its own basis can be examined.”
Fabricated citations and facts in filings
- Deepak Raheja v. Omkara Assets Reconstruction “Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption, is the first clause engaged.”
- Kid International v. City National Bank of Florida “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, describes the failure counsel himself identified, a verification process that did not catch the errors before filing.”
- Aguilar v. The Crawford Group, Inc. “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is engaged by the premise itself.”
- Zhejiang Dingli Machinery Co. v. United States “Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption, is the clause Zhejiang Dingli engages first: a factual claim about what an agency found must be traceable to a page of the record before it goes into a filing.”
- Assemblies of God Gospel Church v. Registrar of Societies “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, follows: a reported citation to a named volume and page could be checked quickly, and the judge did so while writing the ruling.”
- SRA v Kumar (Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal) “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is engaged by what happened next: after the errors were identified, the next document was produced the same way and contained the same kind of errors.”
- State v. Sandoval (Aarons sanction) “The same point runs to Clause 4 (checkability before adoption): the transcript was available, so the output could have been checked, and it was not.”
- Daghra v. Hinkley (government counsel)
- In re Rosslyn2016 (a legal research tool is still a tool) “Nor is it a substitute for Clause 4, checkability before adoption, which asks what the output would be checked against before it is adopted at all.”
- In re Prince Global Holdings (Sullivan & Cromwell) “The conduct engaged Clause 3 of the Expert Record Standard (independent authority) and Clause 4 (checkability before adoption).”
- Obi v. Cook County
- Amarsingh v. Frontier Airlines (Tenth Circuit) “The conduct engaged Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, and Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- Clinco v. Commissioner “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is the procedural half.”
- Noland v. Land of the Free, L.P. “Clause 4 (checkability before adoption) is also engaged.”
- Victorian murder trial submissions (Nathwani KC)
- Johnson v. Dunn (Butler Snow)
- Ayinde v Haringey and Al-Haroun v Qatar National Bank
- Mata v. Avianca, Inc. “Clause 4 (checkability before adoption) applies directly.”
AI-generated and altered evidence
- Adams v. Anderson (Kentucky Court of Appeals) “He checked the photograph against the records it should have matched, which is Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption, applied by the opposing side.”
- State v. Amyda (deepfake claim without evidence) “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, asks that question first: before adopting the output, identify the specific thing against which it would be checked.”
- Florida v. Schinault (ChatGPT image false report)
- Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield
- Maryland v. Darien (Pikesville High deepfake audio)
- State of Washington v. Puloka
- Huang v. Tesla
Judges, courts and AI
- Faiz Enterprise v. State Tax Officer “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, is engaged as well.”
- EPFO v. Principal Commissioner of Income Tax “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, follows: each citation named a volume and a page, and one visit to the reports would have exposed all six.”
- Molawa v. Matjhabeng Local Municipality “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, follows: the citations were specific, and the employees tested them.”
- Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu and Kashmir Bank Ltd. “The appellate tribunal's repetition of them engaged Clause 4 a second time.”
- Henry County Schools v. Grant (party-drafted order) “The conduct engaged Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption.”
- H.C. v. Contreras “Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption, is the clause H.C. v.”
- ARIHQ v. Santé Québec, 2026 QCCS 1360 “Clause 4, checkability before adoption, explains how the defect surfaced: every neutral citation could be looked up, and every one failed.”
- In re Domestic Partnership of Torres Campos and Munoz “Bonar said she "mistakenly assumed that, because these materials were part of the Superior Court's official record, the citations had already been vetted and could be relied upon as accurate." Clause 4, checkability before adoption, describes what failed at the bench: a party-drafted order was signed without anyone opening the cases it named.”
- Judge Wheeler (Oklahoma) fabricated citations
- In re CorMedix Securities Litigation (Judge Neals) “Clause 4 was engaged as well.”
- Jackson Federation of Teachers v. Fitch (Judge Wingate) “The remedial steps the judge reported, a second reviewer and a printed copy of every case attached to the draft, are a working form of Clause 4: nothing is adopted until it has been checked against its source.”
AI inside the courtroom
- Williams v. State (Ind. Ct. App.) AI-assisted transcript “That is Clause 4 of the Expert Record Standard, checkability before adoption, and Clause 3, independent authority: the words attributed to a speaker should be confirmed against the audio, not accepted on the system's rendering.”
- State v. Horcasitas (Pelkey AI victim impact statement) “Checkability, Clause 4, is the one most directly engaged.”
- Arizona Supreme Court AI news reporters “That is checkability, Clause 4, in its simplest form: each video can be checked against a human-authored text before and after it is published.”
- DoNotPay "robot lawyer" and FTC order “That is the situation non-delegation, Clause 2, addresses: the argument would have been composed by the system in real time, and neither the defendant nor anyone else could have checked it before it was spoken, contrary to Clause 4.”
Rules, orders and guidance
- Tenth Circuit proposed Rule 46.5(B)(4) on generative AI “The requirement that review happen before filing corresponds to Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
- Proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 707 “The proposal engages Clause 4 of the Standard, checkability before adoption.”
- AI Judicial Guidance, England and Wales (October 2025)
- ABA Formal Opinion 512 “The opinion's verification passage corresponds to Clause 3 of the Standard, independent authority, and Clause 4, checkability before adoption.”
Clause 3: Independent authority · All eight clauses · Clause 5: Reproducible analysis