Catch the Fabricated Citation — Ch. 10 · Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Legal Research

Catch the Fabricated Citation

Courts have sanctioned lawyers for filing briefs whose citations turned out not to exist — fluent, confident, and hollow. The duty of competence makes verification your job, and verification is mechanical: retrieve the source, read it for the proposition, check its treatment. This exercise makes you run those steps eight times — and two of these citations will not survive them.

How to use this: the brief on the left cites eight authorities (all fictional, in this site’s demonstration universe). Click a citation, then work the panel on the right: retrieve it from the closed database — or determine it isn’t there — then classify it. Watch for the near-miss case name in the database; retrieval means matching the citation, not the vibe.

0 of 8 citations verified

Demonstration — fictional brief & fictional authorities

Argument — Tenant’s Motion (excerpt)

A residential landlord owes the tenant a duty to keep the premises fit for habitation, and that duty includes the supply of heat. Once heat fails, the landlord must restore it within a reasonable time, and that clock begins to run when the tenant gives the landlord notice of the failure.

Where the landlord does not repair, the tenant may repair and deduct the cost, or withhold rent after giving written notice. Indeed, a tenant may withhold rent without any prior notice to the landlord.

Damages are not limited to lost rental value: emotional-distress damages are routinely available for any habitability breach. The tenant is further entitled to attorney’s fees as of right, and to a statutory penalty of $250 per day of inadequate heat.