Coronavirus Reporter Corporation v. Apple Inc.

Coronavirus Reporter Corporation v. Apple Inc. is one matter in the Veritas record of US court proceedings involving AI-generated citations that could not be verified against the reporters named. The summary below is drawn from the underlying court document, linked at the foot of this page.

Court

N.D. California

Date

July 30, 2025

Party

Lawyer

AI tool

ChatGPT

Outcome

Rule 11 sanctions warranted; defense fees/costs awarded (amount to be set on declaration); $400,000 request and vexatious-litigant request denied

Penalty

No monetary penalty in this order.

What the record shows

The court found that plaintiffs' counsel filed a frivolous res judicata-barred complaint and numerous meritless motions, and that he admitted using ChatGPT to generate in its entirety a petition exhibit submitted three times, plus motions containing hallucinated citations and quotations (for example a nonexistent Klein v. Cheung). Finding Rule 11 violations, the court held the defendant entitled to its reasonable fees and costs and directed it to submit declarations detailing the request; the court denied Apple's $400,000 figure and its vexatious-litigant request pending proper process.

This entry reflects the court document as filed. The citations at issue could not be located in the reporters named at the time of the order. The reading here is descriptive of the public record and is not legal advice.

Source documents

Primary court document ↗

The test this filing did not run

Every matter in this record shares one mechanism: a citation that did not resolve to an opinion in the reporter named, in a brief that was filed before any verification step ran. Veritas runs that step. The Filing Risk Scanner extracts each citation, resolves it against reporter and public-record sources, and returns a verdict on each one — located, partial, or not located in reporter — before the brief is signed.

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