In a surprising development, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday questioned the legitimacy of three judgments cited by a trial court in its order, with Senior Advocate Prabhuling Navadgi revealing that the cited judgments appeared to be “non-existent.”
Navadgi, representing Samman Capital, a non-banking financial company, informed the single-judge bench of Justice R Devdas that the trial court’s November 2024 decision, which had dismissed his client’s plea, relied on three case judgments—two from the Supreme Court and one from the Delhi High Court. However, no records of these judgments could be found on the official websites of the respective courts, raising concerns over the authenticity of the cited precedents.
The judgments in question were “M/s Jalan Trading Co Pvt Ltd vs Millennium Telecom Ltd (Civil Appeal No. 5860/2010)” and “Kvaerner Cementation India vs Achil Builders (Civil Appeal No. 6074/2018)” from the Supreme Court, and “SK Gopal vs UNI Deritend Ltd (CS 1114/2016)” from the Delhi High Court. Navadgi pointed out that a search of the case titles and citations revealed no matching records.
“It happens sometimes when one uses artificial intelligence programs and chatbots such as ChatGPT, AI might generate fictional results. It sometimes makes things up. I don’t know what happened here but these judgements do not exist,” said Navadgi, adding that the trial court’s reliance on these non-existent cases had led to a wrongful denial of relief for Samman Capital.
Navadgi further emphasized that neither party had cited these judgments during the hearing before the trial court, suggesting that the cited cases were either fabricated or a result of a clerical error.
The issue arose from a dispute between Samman Capital and the Mantri group, a real estate developer, regarding unpaid loans and an executed bond trustee agreement. After the developer defaulted, Samman Capital had issued a sale notice. However, the trial court rejected the company’s plea to challenge the jurisdiction of the trial court, ruling that the case was within its purview based on the non-existent judgments.
The respondent-developer’s counsel, unaware of the alleged error, requested more time to verify the claims. Justice R Devdas adjourned the case to February 5, 2025, for further proceedings.
This curious turn of events underscores the importance of verifying legal precedents and the challenges posed by AI-generated content in legal contexts.
