Federal counsel used Anthropic Claude Console to draft a May 2026 motion that included quotations not found in the cited cases. The firm apologised to the court and committed to citation verification via established legal research platforms.
In AFGE v. Trump (N.D. Cal. No. 3:25-cv-03698), Binnall Law Group counsel used Claude Console under deadline pressure to draft a motion to quash a subpoena. An associate reviewed the draft but quoted language was not verified against the cited opinions. Judge Susan Illston flagged phantom quotations; partners filed apologies and described policy gaps, committing to supplemental training and Westlaw/Lexis citation checks.
How the Production Safety Framework maps to this failure
A D2 + D6 failure in a high-consequence legal workflow, compounded by D5 gaps: generative drafting under deadline without a fileable-path gate. The episode extends the court-filing hallucination pattern to a named enterprise console in active federal litigation.
Specific PSF controls mapped to each failure point
Public apologies to the court; firm policy and training updates reported May 2026. Widely cited alongside the broader wave of generative-AI citation sanctions in litigation.
Use the PSF domains behind this incident to define review gates, remediation evidence, and safer production requirements.