[microtherion]

The original bogus citations may be excusable as a genuine misunderstanding of ChatGPT, i.e. he falsely thought he had a research assistant feeding him accurate quotes.

But there is simply no good faith excuse for filing the transcripts of the cases without as much as skimming them, once doubts had been raised. I’m not a lawyer, but even a cursory look at the Varghese case transcript shows that it’s gibberish: The name of the plaintiff changing inexplicably, the plaintiff filing bankruptcy (of two different kinds) as a tactical move, etc. Another transcript purports to be about a passenger suing an airline over being denied an exit row seat. As soon as you start reading the “transcripts”, you see that something is seriously off about them, compared to the two real (but irrelevant) cases cited.