Courtready research on how Canadian courts and tribunals respond to AI-generated fictitious citations has been published in Law360 Canada. The analysis of 177 decisions finds that the consequences for citing non-existent case law remain strikingly inconsistent.

On June 5, 2026, Law360 Canada published Inconsistent consequences: How Canadian courts and tribunals respond to AI misuse, an analysis by Courtready co-founder Tom Macintosh Zheng. It is the second article drawn from Courtready’s ongoing research into AI-hallucinated case law in Canadian courts and tribunals.

The piece examines what happens after an adjudicator catches a fictitious citation in a filing. Across 177 decisions, the response ranged from no sanction at all to costs orders paid personally by counsel, with courts imposing a serious sanction more than five times as often as administrative tribunals did for the same conduct. The central finding is that the consequence of relying on non-existent case law depends less on what a litigant did than on the forum in which they appeared.

The analysis draws on Courtready’s database tracking AI-hallucinated cases in Canadian courts and tribunals, which is updated weekly. The full article is available on Law360 Canada.

We are grateful to Law360 Canada for featuring this research.