IT | Tribunale ordinario di Firenze, sezione imprese
Docket: 11053/2024 R.G. • appellate
2025-03-14
Tribunale ordinario di Firenze, sezione imprese — ordinanza (reclamo) n. 11053/2024 R.G.
ChatGPT (disclosed) ai-assisted legal researchinaccurate or mismatched case citationno human verification of citations
I. Executive Summary
The court addressed an objection that the opposing party’s brief relied on incorrect or non-existent case-law references.
Counsel explained that a staff member used ChatGPT to search for jurisprudence and inserted the returned citations without verification, producing mismatched or inaccurate Supreme Court references.
The court treated the lack of verification as blameworthy but analysed it under the aggravated-liability framework.
It denied the request to condemn the opposing party under article 96 of the Italian code of civil procedure, finding that the prerequisites (including pleaded/proved damages or the required subjective threshold) were not met based on the AI-related citation issue.
II. Conduct Analysis
A law-firm collaborator used ChatGPT to look for case law and copied the resulting citations into a filing without checking their existence or relevance.
The supervising counsel stated they were unaware of the AI use and later sought to strike the erroneous references.
III. Legal Foundations
Italian code of civil procedure, article 96(1) (aggravated liability; damages must be alleged/proved)
Italian code of civil procedure, article 96(3) (bad faith or gross negligence threshold)
IV. Key Facts
1) The counterparty asserted that jurisprudential references in the opposing defence were incorrect or non-existent; the court opened a dedicated written-briefing round limited to that issue.
2) Counsel for the opposing party stated that the references were produced via ChatGPT by a staff member; counsel had not verified them before filing and was unaware of the AI use at the time.
3) The opposing party asked that the references be struck; the moving party sought condemnation under article 96 c.p.c. based on the AI-generated/incorrect citations.
V. Consequences & Sanction
1) The request to impose aggravated-liability consequences under article 96 c.p.c. based on the AI-related citation issue was denied.