On August 27, the Intellectual Property Court issued a ruling imposing a fine in case No. A71-11377/2025 on an entrepreneur who cited non-existent case law in his cassation appeal.
During the trial, the Intellectual Property Court, as well as the plaintiff's in their response to the cassation appeal, pointed out that the defendant had cited nonexistent decisions and cases that could not be identified by the specified details, and had cited excerpts that were not actually present in the documents. The entrepreneur insisted that the incorrect references were a technical error, and that the inaccurate data was generated by the AI-powered "Consultant Plus" service used by his representative in preparing the complaint, and was not intended to show contempt of court.
The Intellectual Property Court qualified the defendant's actions as knowingly providing false information, contempt of court, and deliberate misrepresentation in the hopes of inattentive consideration of the complaint. The Court emphasized that the use of artificial intelligence in preparing a cassation appeal does not relieve the applicant of responsibility for its content.
Irina Ozolina, senior partner at «A.Zalesov & Partners», in her comment for «Attorney’s Newspaper» noted that this is not the first case in which courts have punished a party for presenting non-existent case law.
«As an earlier example, we can cite the ruling of the West Siberian District Arbitration Court dated May 14, 2026, regarding case No. A27-7831/2025, in which the cassation court had already imposed a fine on a party for using non-existent case law. This position is understandable: the court should have a mechanism that allows it to avoid having to double-check every party's reference to case law, and placing liability for false case law on the party is a sufficiently reliable way to ensure the accuracy of this information in the parties' judicial positions».
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