0. Source disclosure (required)
SYNTHETIC EXEMPLAR — constructed illustrative scenario, not a court-documented incident.
No docket, jurisdiction, party, or vendor in this record refers to a real filing. Party names (LegalTech Corp, DataLex Systems, BriefBot Inc.) and reporter citations below were invented for pedagogy. There is no incident date because there was no incident.
This record exists to teach the Total Authority Fabrication failure class. For court-documented seed records, see #001 and #003.
1. The teaching scenario (not a crime scene)
In a constructed brief-drafting scenario, counsel would face three state appellate citations supporting a novel algorithmic-liability theory — all generated by a commercial legal-research assistant and inserted without independent verification. Opposing counsel (in the scenario) flags the citations.
Pattern under study: a production legal-AI wrapper returns fabricated state appellate opinions with realistic-looking docket numbers and neutral citations — indistinguishable from real authority on a surface read.
2. The Artifact (constructed LLM-style output)
"In Kistler v. LegalTech Corp., 412 P.3d 891 (Colo. App. 2023), the court held
that a vendor owes a duty of reasonable care when marketing AI-generated legal
research as 'court-validated' where the output is used in filed pleadings..."
"See also Hartwell v. DataLex Systems, 198 A.3d 445 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2022)
(applying a negligence-per-se standard to uncited AI outputs in probate filings)."
"Compare Morales v. BriefBot Inc., 387 So. 3d 112 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2024)
(reversing dismissal where plaintiff alleged reliance on AI-generated precedent)."
3. The Evidence Breakdown (why this pattern matters)
Claimed Authority: Kistler v. LegalTech Corp., 412 P.3d 891 (Colo. App. 2023).
Check: Invented caption and reporter pin. Used here only to illustrate total fabrication — not as a claim about Colorado reporters.
Claimed Authority: Hartwell v. DataLex Systems, 198 A.3d 445 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2022).
Check: Invented. Syntactically coherent holdings are not evidence of existence.
Pattern: UI confidence formatting ("Verified Cases") can coexist with entirely novel authorities. Link-structure validators do not catch this failure class.
4. Verification note (honest scope)
A complete existence check for state reporter indices requires jurisdiction-specific resolution infrastructure. This exemplar does not claim a live multi-state reporter audit was performed against production tooling. The pedagogical point is the failure class: fabricated authorities that look real on a surface read.
Compare court-documented fabrication: #001 Mata v. Avianca.