Claude on Question 48, Sep 27

This case doesn't exist — it can't be "good law" because it was never decided, and I can't quote a holding from it.

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 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.). When opposing counsel and the court couldn't locate it, the attorney doubled down and produced a fake "excerpt" of the opinion — also generated by the chatbot. Judge P. Kevin Castel issued a sanctions opinion on June 22, 2023, imposing a $5,000 penalty on the attorneys and their firm, and identifying six bogus decisions, including Varghese, 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.

A few things worth flagging:

• •If you encountered this citation in a brief, memo, or research product you received, that's a serious red flag about the source's reliability — every other citation in it should be independently verified.
• •The volume and page (925 F.3d 1339) may well correspond to some real, unrelated case, which is typical of hallucinated citations — the format is plausible, the content is not.

On the underlying issue. In Mata, Varghese was offered for the proposition that the Montreal Convention's two-year limitations period (Art. 35) is tolled during an air carrier's Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The actual weight of authority runs the other way: courts generally treat the two-year period as a condition precedent to suit that extinguishes the right of action rather than a statute of limitations subject to tolling. Real authority you can check on that point includes Fishman v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 132 F.3d 138 (2d Cir. 1998) (construing the parallel Art. 29 of the Warsaw Convention), and Narayanan v. British Airways, 747 F.3d 1125 (9th Cir. 2014). Please pull those yourself rather than relying on my recitation — that's precisely the lesson of Mata.

To verify any citation: check Westlaw or Lexis directly, the Eleventh Circuit's published opinions database at ca11.uscourts.gov, PACER, or free sources like CourtListener/Google Scholar. If a case doesn't appear in at least one authoritative database, treat it as nonexistent.