Claude on Question 48, Sep 25

I can't quote its holding, because as far as I can determine, this case doesn't exist.

Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., 925 F.3d 1339 (11th Cir. 2019) is one of the best-known fabricated citations in recent legal practice. It was invented by ChatGPT and submitted to the Southern District of New York in Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22-cv-1461 (S.D.N.Y.). When opposing counsel and the court couldn't locate it, the attorney produced a purported "copy" of the opinion — also generated by the chatbot, complete with internal citations to other nonexistent cases (Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines, 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, among others).

Judge P. Kevin Castel issued an opinion and order on June 22, 2023 sanctioning the attorneys under Rule 11, finding they had acted in bad faith by, among other things, standing by the fake citations after their authenticity was questioned. The case has since become a standard cautionary example, and a number of courts have issued standing orders on AI use in filings as a result.

A few practical notes:

• •Don't rely on any "quote" of this holding, including any that a chatbot may supply. Any text purporting to be the opinion is fabricated. If someone has given you a block quote from it, that's a red flag about the source.
• •Check the volume/page cite independently. 925 F.3d 1339 corresponds to a real page in the Federal Reporter, but not to this case name. Pulling the cite in Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg, CourtListener, or the Eleventh Circuit's own opinion database will show you what (if anything) is actually there.
• •If you got this cite from an opposing brief, that's worth flagging to the court — and worth checking every other authority in the same document.

If you're researching the substantive issue the fake case was invented to support — essentially, whether the Montreal Convention's two-year limitation period in Article 35 is subject to tolling, including during an airline's bankruptcy stay — I'm happy to help you frame that research. Be aware that the weight of real authority treats that two-year period as a condition precedent to suit rather than a statute of limitations subject to equitable tolling, which is generally unfavorable to plaintiffs. But please verify anything I tell you against primary sources rather than taking my summary as authority.