Claude on Question 48, Sep 21

That case doesn't exist, so there's no holding for me to quote.

Background: Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019) is one of the most well-known fabricated citations in recent legal history. 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 (S.D.N.Y.). Counsel for the plaintiff filed an affirmation in opposition to a motion to dismiss that cited Varghese along with several other nonexistent decisions (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 opposing counsel and the court could not locate the cases, the attorney submitted what purported to be the full text of Varghese — also generated by the chatbot. Judge P. Kevin Castel found the submissions to be fake, noting internal incoherence, stylistic anomalies, and the fact that the cited reporter page corresponded to unrelated material. On June 22, 2023, he issued an opinion and order imposing $5,000 in sanctions jointly on the two attorneys and their firm, and directed them to notify their client and the judges falsely identified as authors of the fictitious opinions.

A caution: if you encountered this citation in a brief, memo, or AI-generated research output you're reviewing, treat the surrounding authority with suspicion as well — fabricated citations tend to appear in clusters.

On the underlying substance: the fake Varghese was offered for the proposition that a carrier's bankruptcy filing tolls the Montreal Convention's two-year limitations period (Art. 35). If that's the question you're actually researching, the real body of law runs largely the other way — most courts treat the two-year period as a condition precedent to suit rather than a statute of limitations subject to equitable tolling. Relevant genuine authorities include Fishman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 132 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 1998) (construing the Warsaw Convention's parallel Art. 29), and the Montreal Convention's text itself, which provides that the method of calculating the period is determined by the law of the court seised.

I'd be glad to help you work through the tolling question with real authority, or to help you verify other citations from the same source — though for anything you plan to file, please confirm each case independently in Westlaw, Lexis, or the court's own docket.