Claude on Question 48, Sep 12

Short answer: it isn't good law, because it isn't law at all — that case doesn't exist.

I can't quote a holding from it, and you should be careful about anyone who does.

Where this citation comes from

"Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019)" is one of the most famous fabricated citations in recent legal practice. It was invented by ChatGPT and submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) (S.D.N.Y. June 22, 2023). Counsel filed a brief relying on Varghese and several other nonexistent decisions (e.g., Shaboon v. Egyptair, Petersen v. Iran Air, Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Miller v. United Airlines). When opposing counsel and the court could not locate them, the attorney went back to ChatGPT, which obligingly generated a full fake "opinion" text — complete with invented internal citations and a purported holding about tolling of the Montreal Convention's two-year limitations period during a bankruptcy stay. Judge Castel found the submissions were fabricated and imposed sanctions, including a $5,000 penalty on the attorneys and their firm.

So if you've seen a "holding" quoted for Varghese — something to the effect that the Montreal Convention's Article 35 limitation period is tolled by a carrier's bankruptcy proceedings — that language was machine-generated, not written by any court.

Practical notes

• •Verify before citing. The case does not appear in Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, PACER, or the Eleventh Circuit's own opinion database. The volume/page cite (925 F.3d 1339) belongs to an unrelated real decision, which is part of why the fake looks plausible.
• •If you were told it came from a brief or memo, treat the whole document as suspect and re-check every citation. Courts are now routinely issuing show-cause orders and sanctions for this.
• •If you actually need authority on the underlying issue — whether the Montreal Convention's two-year period in Article 35 is subject to tolling — real cases include Narayanan v. British Airways, 747 F.3d 1125 (9th Cir. 2014) (Article 35 is a condition precedent to suit, not a statute of limitations subject to state-law tolling), and Fishman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 132 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 1998) (same conclusion under the Warsaw Convention's Article 29). Both cut against the proposition the fake Varghese was fabricated to support.

If you tell me the specific issue you're researching, I can point you toward genuine authority — and flag which points I'm confident about versus which you should confirm in a database.