The Crown Prosecution Service Submitted Fake Case Law to the High Court
What happened
In June 2025, the Crown Prosecution Service filed documents in the High Court of England and Wales containing two case citations that do not correspond to any real decisions. The nonexistent authorities appeared in grounds of opposition submitted in a pair of extradition appeals. Reports identified the citations as likely produced by generative AI output. The CPS offered an apology after the problem was flagged, and the explanation it gave pointed to a lawyer who reviewed the filings but did not verify the citations before they went in.
The appeals were joined proceedings brought by Andreea-Maria Tobosaru and Marian Tofan. The false citations appeared in the initial grounds of opposition the CPS filed against them and then appeared again in a subsequent document in the same matter. That second appearance confirms the error was not caught internally between filings. Whatever review process existed, it did not include checking whether the cited cases were real.
The High Court noted the fabricated citations but concluded that they did not affect the outcome of either appeal. The proceedings continued on their substantive merits. The CPS acknowledged the mistake and attributed it to inadequate verification by the reviewing lawyer, framing the failure as an individual one rather than a process one.
That framing is worth examining. A reviewing lawyer who fails to check sources is one kind of problem. A system that relies entirely on that individual check, with no verification step built into the submission workflow, is a different kind. A basic search in any legal database would have returned no results for either citation. Nothing in the reported account suggests that search was required, automated, or independently confirmed by a second reader before the documents reached the court.
The incident illustrates a gap that extends well beyond this office. When AI-generated text enters a legal submission without a required verification step, there is no provable record of what a system produced, what a human confirmed, and what checks stood between one and the other. An apology resolves the immediate case. It does not establish whether the same citations, or similar ones, appeared in other filings produced around the same time by the same methods. Accountability for AI-assisted work in legal proceedings depends on exactly that kind of traceable record, and this case makes clear it was not in place.
Reported impact
- Affected parties
- Not publicly disclosed
- Harm type
- Not publicly disclosed
- Scale
- Not publicly disclosed
- Financial impact
- Not publicly disclosed
- Regulatory action
- Not publicly disclosed
Classification
Relevant governance controls
Governance control mapping is not available for this record.
- No controls mapped
Not publicly disclosed
Control mapping is analytical. It does not state that any control would have prevented the incident.
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index. The event is also catalogued in the following database, which is listed for cross-reference.