AI Hallucinations in Georgia Courts: The Order You Did Not Draft
Picture your last closing. Now count the documents you signed that you did not write. The title commitment came from the agency. The closing instructions…
Picture your last closing.
Now count the documents you signed that you did not write. The title commitment came from the agency. The closing instructions came from the lender. The deed package came from opposing counsel. The payoff letter came from a servicer you have never spoken to.
You reviewed them. You signed them. Your signature converted someone else’s work product into your liability.
On June 10, 2026, a Georgia judge learned what that conversion costs.
On June 10, 2026, the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated a Title VII ruling because the trial court signed a proposed order, drafted by a party’s attorney, that relied on at least one hallucinated case. The defect did not enter through a tool anyone in that courtroom used. It entered through a document the court adopted, which is why a firm AI policy that stops at your own staff no longer describes your actual exposure.
What did the Georgia Court of Appeals hold on June 10, 2026 about AI citations in a proposed order?
The Court of Appeals reversed and vacated in part because the trial court adopted a party-drafted order containing fabricated authority. The three related appeals arose from employment discrimination suits against Henry County Schools. See Henry County Schools v. Grant, Georgia Court of Appeals, 2026, decided with companion appeals Henry County Schools v. Douglas and Henry County Schools v. Forbes. The panel found the order misquoted authority, conflated legal standards, and relied on at least one hallucinated case. A hallucinated case is one that does not exist.
The court reversed the denial of dismissal on the state-law claims. It vacated the Title VII ruling and remanded for a proper analysis of whether the district qualified as an arm of the state.
Then the panel said the part that should hold your attention. It called the submission of such an order troubling. It called the trial court’s failure to catch the errors before signing regrettable.
Read that sequence again. The party’s attorney drafted it. The judge signed it. The appellate court vacated it.
Nobody in that courtroom typed a prompt. The defect still arrived, and it still had consequences.
Does my AI policy cover documents drafted outside my firm?
Almost certainly not. Most firm AI policies govern what your staff types into a tool. Very few govern what arrives already drafted. That gap is where Shadow AI enters a real estate finance practice, and it does not enter through your associates. It enters through your counterparties.
Count the adoption vectors in a single transaction:
- Proposed orders and consent orders prepared by opposing counsel
- Title commitments and curative documents from the title agency
- Lender-prepared closing instructions and loan packages
- Vendor-generated survey, HOA, and payoff correspondence
- Client-supplied entity documents and prior-counsel work product
Every one of those documents was drafted somewhere you cannot see, by someone whose AI practices you have never vetted.
You do not have to use AI to answer for it. You only have to adopt its output.
Consider a hypothetical Thursday afternoon. A borrower’s counsel sends a consent order resolving a lien dispute so the loan can close Friday. The order recites Georgia authority on lien priority. It reads clean. You are managing a wire deadline, a title curative, and a lender underwriter who wants an answer within the hour. You sign the consent. You file it. Six weeks later, opposing counsel in a related matter pulls the cited authority and finds one case that does not exist. The order is yours now. Your signature is on it. Your client’s priority position depends on it. The document that failed was the one you never questioned, because it came from a lawyer, not from a chatbot.
The rule exposure is not exotic. GRPC 3.3 governs candor toward the tribunal. GRPC 5.1 and 5.3 govern supervision. GRPC 1.1 governs competence. A document whose origin you cannot account for raises a competence question, whoever drafted it.
If you took the AI Liability Quiz and landed in the Fragile Hybrid tier, this is the exact seam that put you there. The Hybrid firm has a written policy. It has an approved tool list. It has staff training. What it does not have is intake control on inbound documents. The policy stops at the firm’s own keyboard.
A Digital Fortress program does something different. It treats every adopted document as unvetted until a named attorney verifies it.
Have Georgia courts sanctioned attorneys over AI hallucinations?
AI hallucinations in Georgia courts are no longer a warning. They are a sanctions record. In Shahid v. Esaam, the Georgia Court of Appeals imposed the maximum available sanction in 2025 for a filing built on fabricated citations. The Supreme Court of Georgia addressed a separate matter in 2026 involving a Clayton County prosecution where a trial court order tracked a proposed order containing citations to cases that do not exist. The June 10 panel referenced that matter directly while urging trial courts to review what they are asked to adopt.
The national baseline has not moved. ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued July 29, 2024, remains current.
Volume gives the trend its shape. Researcher Damien Charlotin’s database documents more than 1,600 AI hallucination incidents worldwide across courts and arbitration proceedings, with over 22 of them in Georgia.
Georgia is not watching this from a distance. Georgia is generating the case law.
What are the three steps to bring inbound documents under my AI policy?
Three steps, and none of them require new software. They require an inventory, a clause, and a record.
Step One. Identify every adoption point in your transaction.
- Inventory which documents enter the file already drafted. Walk one closed matter start to finish and list them.
- Name the source of each one. Opposing counsel. Title agency. Lender. Vendor. Client. Prior counsel.
- Mark every document you sign, file, record, or forward. Those are your adoption points.
Step Two. Extend the policy past your own staff.
- Add an Adopted Work Product clause to the AI Acceptable Use Policy.
- Define adoption precisely. Signing, filing, recording, or forwarding a document under firm letterhead is adoption.
- Require independent verification of every authority cited in any document the firm adopts, without regard to who drafted it.
Step Three. Build the verification record.
- Log the verification itself, not just the conclusion. A note reading “reviewed” proves nothing. A note recording which authorities were pulled, from which database, on which date, proves everything. Undocumented compliance is not Audit-Ready Compliance.
- Assign a named reviewing attorney to each adopted document. Anonymous review is no review.
- Route the record into your Monthly AI Audit and your Quarterly Governance Review.
That quarterly review is the mechanism that catches what a single closing cycle hides. Adoption points multiply without announcement. Count them on a schedule.
What does Audit-Ready Compliance look like next to the Wild West?
The difference is not effort. The difference is where the defect gets found.
| Checkpoint | The Wild West | The Governance Way |
|---|---|---|
| Adoption points | Unmapped | Inventoried by document and source |
| Inbound documents | Adopted as received | Verified before signature |
| Citation checking | Assumed done upstream | Independently confirmed, by name |
| Supervision scope | Firm staff only | Every source entering firm work product |
| Verification record | Verbal, undocumented | Logged, dated, attorney-attributed |
| Discovery of a defect | Found by the court | Found by the audit |
| Governance posture | Reactive | Audit-Ready Compliance |
The Bottom Line
On June 10, 2026, the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated a Title VII ruling after a trial court adopted a party-drafted order relying on at least one hallucinated case. Under GRPC 1.1, 3.3, 5.1, and 5.3, your verification duty attaches when you adopt a document, not only when you draft one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Am I responsible for AI hallucinations in a document drafted by opposing counsel?
You become responsible when you adopt it. Signing, filing, recording, or forwarding a document under your letterhead places your professional judgment behind its contents. The June 10, 2026 Georgia Court of Appeals decision vacated a ruling built on a party-drafted order, and the panel treated the failure to catch the errors before signing as its own problem.
Which Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct apply to AI use in a real estate practice?
Rule 1.1 governs competence. Rule 1.6 governs confidentiality of client information entered into any AI system. Rule 3.3 governs candor toward the tribunal. Rules 5.1 and 5.3 govern supervision of the work entering your file, including work you did not produce. Where a firm cannot account for how a document was produced, competence becomes a fair question.
Has any Georgia court sanctioned an attorney for AI-generated citations?
Yes. In Shahid v. Esaam, the Georgia Court of Appeals imposed the maximum available sanction in 2025 for a filing containing fabricated citations. The Supreme Court of Georgia addressed a separate 2026 matter involving a Clayton County prosecution in which a trial court order tracked a proposed order citing cases that do not exist.
What is an Adopted Work Product clause?
It is a provision in a firm AI Acceptable Use Policy extending verification duties to documents the firm did not draft. The clause defines adoption as signing, filing, recording, or forwarding under firm letterhead, and requires a named attorney to independently verify every authority cited in any adopted document.
What is an adoption point in a real estate closing?
An adoption point is any document you sign, file, record, or forward under firm letterhead that someone else drafted. Common examples include proposed and consent orders from opposing counsel, title commitments and curative documents from the agency, lender closing instructions, and vendor payoff correspondence. Each one carries your professional judgment forward regardless of who produced it.
Where does your firm actually stand?
Most firms discover the adopted-document gap the way the trial court did. After the fact, in someone else’s opinion.
The AI Liability Quiz sorts your firm into one of three tiers in under five minutes. Statutory Time Bomb. Fragile Hybrid. Digital Fortress. Each tier comes with the specific exposure that put you there and the specific correction that moves you out of it.
Take the AI Liability Quiz and find out which documents on your desk are already yours.
See you next time.
This article is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Georgia attorneys should consult the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and the State Bar Ethics Helpline regarding their specific circumstances.
