UK High Court Warns Against Fake AI Case Citations: The Duty to Verify in Light of Ayinde

On June 6, 2025, the Divisional Court of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales handed down a judgment that joined two unrelated cases, Ayinde and Al-Haroun, and addressed how fictitious case citations generated by generative AI came to be submitted to the court and the consequences. The neutral citation is [2025] EWHC 1383 (Admin), and the case numbers are AC-2024-LON-003062 (Ayinde) and CL-2024-000435 (Al-Haroun). Both cases share the feature that the representatives submitted to the court, without verification, research results suspected of having been produced using generative AI, but the positions of the legal professionals involved, the facts and the dispositions made by the court differ from case to case. This article is limited to what can be confirmed in the text of the judgment, and it sets out the facts of the two cases, the nature of the proceedings, the dispositions and the implications for Japanese practice.

What Is the Joint Hearing Under the "Hamid Jurisdiction"?

This judgment was heard not as ordinary civil litigation or disciplinary proceedings but under the so-called Hamid jurisdiction. The Hamid jurisdiction is the court's inherent supervisory power to regulate its own procedures and enforce the duties that legal professionals owe to the court, and it derives from R (Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 3070 (Admin). The panel consisted of two judges: Dame Victoria Sharp P., President of the King's Bench Division, and Mr Justice Johnson. The hearing took place on May 23, 2025.

Unlike ordinary civil litigation, which determines the rights and obligations between parties, Hamid proceedings are proceedings in which the court, on its own initiative, examines the conduct of legal professionals. They are also the forum for deciding whether to initiate contempt of court proceedings and whether to refer matters to the regulators (the Bar Standards Board, the regulatory arm of the Bar Council ("BSB"), and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which regulates solicitors ("SRA")), but they are not themselves proceedings that impose disciplinary sanctions. This is reflected in the fact that the judgment considers separately, for each case, whether to initiate contempt proceedings and whether to make a referral to the regulators.

The Facts of Ayinde and the Court's Decision

Ayinde was a claim for judicial review in which Mr Frederick Ayinde challenged the London Borough of Haringey for breach of its duty to provide interim accommodation in connection with securing housing. The client was represented by Haringey Law Centre, and those involved were Mr Victor Amadigwe, a solicitor and chief executive of the Centre, Ms Sunnelah Hussain, a paralegal under his supervision, and Ms Sarah Forey, the barrister conducting the litigation. The grounds drafted and signed by Ms Forey contained a statement that misstated the effect of section 188(3) of the Housing Act 1996, as well as five fictitious case citations, including El Gendi. Even after counsel for the defendant pointed out that these cases could not be found, Ms Forey provided no specific explanation or copies.

Ritchie J, who heard the application for a wasted costs order ([2025] EWHC 1040 (Admin)), rejected Ms Forey's explanation, ordered her and Haringey Law Centre each to pay GBP 2,000 in wasted costs, and directed referrals to the BSB and the SRA. On May 9, 2025, he referred the case to the judge in charge of Hamid matters.

The Divisional Court concluded that Ms Hussain, the paralegal, was not at fault in any way. As to Ms Forey, it held that either she had deliberately included fictitious citations, or she had been untruthful in denying in her witness statement that she had used generative AI, and that the threshold for initiating contempt proceedings had been met. However, it decided not to initiate contempt proceedings or refer the matter to the Law Officers, on the grounds that determining the facts was not suited to summary proceedings, that issues relating to her training and supervision could not be addressed in proceedings against her alone, that she had already been criticized in a public judgment and referred to the regulator, and that she was in a very junior position. On the other hand, the Divisional Court itself also made a referral to the BSB and identified additional matters for consideration, including the adequacy of Ms Forey's training and supervision. As to Mr Amadigwe, the court did not make him the subject of contempt proceedings because he had not knowingly caused false material to be submitted, but referred him to the SRA on the ground that his response after the defendant's counsel raised the issue was inadequate.

The Facts of Al-Haroun and the Court's Decision

Al-Haroun was a claim in which Mr Hamad Al-Haroun sought damages of approximately GBP 89.4 million from Qatar National Bank QPSC and QNB Capital LLC for breach of a financing agreement. His solicitor was Mr Abid Hussain of Primus Solicitors. The witness statements of Mr Al-Haroun and Mr Hussain submitted in support of an application to set aside an order extending the defendants' time cited 45 cases, but according to a table prepared at the request of Dias J by a judicial assistant, 18 of them did not exist, and many of the others did not support the propositions for which they were cited. On May 9, 2025, Dias J dismissed the application and referred the matter to the judge in charge of Hamid matters.

As to Mr Al-Haroun himself, the Divisional Court accepted that he had created the citations himself using generative AI tools and other means and found that he had no intention of misleading the court, but it stated that the focus of its examination was the conduct of the legal professionals rather than the client. As to another barrister who had not actually settled the application and had merely communicated a contrary view, the court held that the threshold for a referral to the BSB was not met because there was no record showing the content of the advice and the facts were disputed. As to Mr Hussain, it found that he had failed in the basic duty of confirming the accuracy of the citations without independently verifying the research done by the client, but held that the threshold for contempt proceedings was not met because he had no intention to mislead. He had already self-reported to the SRA, and the Divisional Court also made a referral.

The Duty to Verify Identified by the Court and Regulatory Challenges

The Divisional Court reviewed the existing warnings on the use of generative AI that the Bar Council and the SRA had published in 2023 and 2024, as well as the guidance on the use of AI published for judges and updated in April 2025, and stated that there is a professional duty to verify the results of research conducted with generative AI against authoritative sources, such as the government's legislation database, the National Archives database of judgments, the official law reports and the databases of reputable legal publishers. However, it pointed out that merely publishing existing warnings is not enough, and that those in leadership positions, such as heads of chambers and the management of law firms, as well as the regulators, need to take effective measures to ensure that this duty is actually complied with. The Divisional Court sent copies of the judgment to the Bar Council, the Law Society and the Council of the Inns of Court, urging them to consider further action.

Implications for Japanese Practice

The framework presented in this judgment concerns professional regulation in the UK, and I think it cannot be directly read across as an obligation of attorneys under Japanese law. That said, the point that text produced by generative AI must be verified against primary sources before being used as is in submissions is directly relevant to Japanese practice as well. Checks that can be carried out from the next day onward include matching the article numbers and case numbers cited by generative AI against e-Gov and the courts' case law search, or, in contract practice, the original contract itself; having the representative independently confirm sources even for research results provided by the client; and deciding in advance at what stage, and by whom, the AI-derived portions of documents prepared by junior attorneys within the firm will be checked. Specific checking procedures are explained in Always Verify Article Numbers and Sources Yourself: The Pitfalls of Generative AI for checking article numbers and sources, and in Never Use Generative AI Answers As-Is: Why a Human Must Always Do the Final Check for a system that does not take generative AI output at face value. In addition, I think it is useful to also review What Is an AI Lawyer? How to Divide Work Between Attorneys and AI in Corporate Legal Practice in the Age of Generative AI on the division of roles between AI and attorneys in general, and Why Use Codex for Legal Work on use cases in work that includes coding assistance AI.

Moves to Watch

In an appendix, the judgment introduces similar cases in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, beginning with Mata v Avianca in the United States, but the details of each are subjects for separate articles, and this article does not go into them. Developments after the judgment that I was able to confirm at the time of writing include the revision of the guidance on AI use for judicial office holders in October 2025, and the publication by the Civil Justice Council in February 2026 of an interim report and consultation on the use of generative AI in documents submitted to the courts, in which this judgment is referred to repeatedly. On the other hand, the following matters could not be confirmed as public information as of the time of writing (July 12, 2026) and are treated as unconfirmed.

• The conclusion of the BSB's investigation concerning Ms Forey and her supervision
• The conclusion of the SRA's investigations concerning Mr Amadigwe and Mr Hussain
• What specific additional measures the Bar Council, the Law Society and the Council of the Inns of Court have taken in response to the judgment

These outcomes on the regulators' side cannot be confirmed from the text of the judgment, so they need to be checked again once follow-up reports are published.