Claude on Question 48, Sep 20

Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019) does not exist. I can't quote its holding, because there is no such case and therefore no holding to quote.

This citation is well known in the legal community as a fabricated one. It was the centerpiece of Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (PKC) (S.D.N.Y. June 22, 2023), in which plaintiff's counsel submitted a brief containing several nonexistent decisions generated by ChatGPT — including "Varghese," along with purported cases like "Shaboon v. Egyptair," "Petersen v. Iran Air," "Martinez v. Delta Air Lines," "Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines," and "Miller v. United Airlines." When ordered to produce copies, counsel filed AI-generated texts of the "opinions," which cited other fictitious authorities. Judge Castel imposed $5,000 in sanctions on the attorneys and their firm and required them to notify the judges falsely identified as authors of the fake opinions.

A few things worth flagging:

• •If you encountered this citation in a brief, memo, or research product, treat the whole document with suspicion and verify every cite independently in Westlaw, Lexis, or the court's own docket/PACER.
• •If you're being asked to rely on it in a filing, don't. Rule 11 exposure is real, and the Mata line of cases (and the growing number of similar sanctions orders nationwide) makes clear courts have no patience for it.

On the underlying issue, "Varghese" was invented to support the proposition that a bankruptcy stay tolls the Montreal Convention's two-year limitations period (Art. 35). The actual authority runs the other way. Courts have generally treated the two-year period as a condition precedent to suit rather than a statute of limitations subject to tolling — see, e.g., Narayanan v. British Airways, 747 F.3d 1125 (9th Cir. 2014), and, under the predecessor Warsaw Convention Art. 29, Fishman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 132 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 1998). Please confirm those citations yourself before relying on them; I'm giving them from memory as a starting point for your research, not as a substitute for it.

If you tell me what proposition you actually need support for, I can help you frame the research — but I'd rather point you toward verifiable authority than hand you a quotation.