The opinion
Concurring Opinion issued April 23, 2026
In The
Court of Appeals
For The
First District of Texas
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NO. 01-26-00319-CV
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IN RE PAULA M. MILLER, Relator
Original Proceeding on Petition for Writ of Mandamus
CONCURRING OPINION
I write separately to note that the mandamus petition here has attributions
and quotations to caselaw which strongly appear to be AI-fabricated hallucinations.
Filing a document in our Court with fictitious or misleading citations—whether
generated by AI and not checked by a human, or otherwise—is a serious breach of
candor that this Court cannot tolerate. See TEX. R. APP. P. 38.1, 38.9; Schlafly v.
Schlafly, 33 S.W.3d 863, 873 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2000, pet. denied).
“Citing nonexistent case law or misrepresenting the holdings of a case is making a
false statement to a court. It does not matter if [generative AI] told you so.”
United States v. Hayes, 763 F. Supp. 3d 1054, 1067 (E.D. Cal. 2025) (quoting
Maura R. Grossman, Paul W. Grimm, & Daniel G. Brown, Is Disclosure and
Certification of the Use of Generative AI Really Necessary?, 107 Judicature 68, 75
(2023)).
Counsel who appear before this Court and use AI for legal research must do
so with great care. Always “trust and verify” the accuracy and validity of your
results. Trusting AI for legal research without verifying that the cases actually
contain quoted language and stand for the proposition for which they are cited
violates counsel’s ethical duty to this Court. And that unfortunately will require
the Court to take the necessary corrective action including, but not limited to,
striking the offending brief and reporting counsel to the State Bar.
Terry Adams
Chief Justice
Panel consists of Chief Justice Adams and Justices Caughey and Morgan.
Adams, C.J., concurring.
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