Nebraska Supreme Court Reportedly Struck Self-Represented Divorce Litigant's Appellate Brief Containing Purportedly AI-Generated Fictitious Citations

The Nebraska Supreme Court said self-represented divorce litigant Jarrod Shannon's appellate brief contained fictitious citations and incorrect legal claims resulting from his admitted use of generative AI. It struck the brief and reviewed his challenge to a contempt order only for obvious errors before affirming the order.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 3 Misinformation
• Primary risk subdomain: 3.1 False or misleading information

The generative AI system fabricated legal citations and propositions of law, which the litigant then submitted as genuine legal authority to the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Additional risk subdomains

• 7.3 Lack of capability or robustness: The generative AI model failed to perform reliably by hallucinating nonexistent legal cases when prompted for legal research.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Unintentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by a human litigant's decision to use a generative AI tool to write a legal brief, which unintentionally produced fabricated citations that were submitted to the court.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The generative AI tool used to write the brief functions as a chatbot or text generator, which falls under the transparency obligations of Limited Risk systems.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: generative artificial intelligence
• AI purpose: Writing Assistant; Technical Text Generation
• Behaviour type: Assistant
• Alleged developer: Large language model developers
• Alleged deployer: Pro se litigants, Jarrod Shannon
• Alleged harmed parties: Parties to legal proceedings, Nebraska Supreme Court, Judicial integrity, Jarrod Shannon, Epistemic integrity, Courts

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes epistemic harm in the form of fabricated legal citations and misstatements of law submitted to a state supreme court.

Directly caused: The AI system generated fictitious cases and inaccurate legal propositions that were included in an official appellate brief, threatening the integrity of the judicial process.

Indirectly caused: The court had to expend judicial resources to identify, verify, and address the fabricated citations, and subsequently strike the brief.

Inferred additional harm: The submission of AI-generated falsehoods to courts erodes public trust in legal filings and the integrity of judicial opinions if left undetected.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 1
• People reportedly exposed: 2

Potential causes

Management

• Poor Personal Case Management: The litigant failed to manage his appeal responsibly, leading to bad filings.

Technology

• Generative AI Hallucination: The generative AI tool used by the litigant fabricated nonexistent legal cases.
• Lack of Built-in Verification: The AI model used had no integrated mechanism to verify legal citation truth.

Data Inputs

• Unreliable AI Training Data: The model's training data allowed the generation of plausible but fake citations.

Human Factors

• Pro Se Litigant Misuse of AI: A self-represented litigant used generative AI without verifying outputs.
• Negligent Legal Research: The appellant failed to cross-reference AI-generated cases with official records.
• Lack of Technical Literacy: The litigant did not understand the risk of AI hallucination in legal contexts.

Process and Methods

• Absence of Verification Step: No process was followed to manually check citation validity before filing.
• Improper Brief Preparation: Drafting process relied entirely on AI outputs without professional oversight.

Regulatory Environment

• Evolving Legal Standards for AI: Rules for pro se AI use were not yet fully codified in local court rules.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The court opinion explicitly details the litigant's admission of using generative AI, the specific consequences (striking the brief), and the presence of fictitious citations, leaving no ambiguity about the AI's role.

A self-represented litigant in Nebraska submitted an appellate brief containing fake legal citations generated by AI. The Nebraska Supreme Court struck the brief and affirmed a lower court order. This is a localized civil legal issue with negligible national security implications.

• Overall national security impact: Negligible
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: United States
• Alleged perpetrator: Jarrod (pro se litigant)

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. This represents a minor, localized legal procedural issue that has already been resolved by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI acted as a passive text generator, and the human litigant made the final decision to submit the fabricated brief to the court.
• Novelty: Established threat. Generative AI hallucinations in legal filings (such as the Mata v. Avianca case) have occurred in multiple jurisdictions prior to this incident.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. The incident involves a local domestic child custody dispute and contains no threats to physical systems, infrastructure, or human safety.
• Information security: Negligible. This was an isolated case of a pro se litigant submitting a poorly researched legal brief, not a coordinated or systematic disinformation campaign targeting national security.
• Sovereignty: Negligible. While a state supreme court had to strike a brief, this domestic legal filing error does not threaten national sovereignty, core federal government operations, or state authority.
• Economic security: Negligible. The financial impact is limited to personal attorney fees of approximately $16,114 in a private divorce dispute, with no threat to strategic industries or national economic security.
• Societal stability: Negligible. The incident is a private family law dispute and does not present large-scale threats to social cohesion, civil liberties, or population safety.