Use of AI in court cases: caution is still advised!

On 27 August 2025, the Rotterdam District Court issued a ruling in a case concerning trade names ECLI:NL:RBROT:2025:10388. For a change, this is not interesting at the moment.

What is interesting, however, is consideration 5.16:

During the oral hearing, it was established that all references in the statement of defence to judgments of the Supreme Court are incorrect. In the statement of defence, Dwaard referred to (alleged) judgments of the Supreme Court regarding trade name law, citing an (alleged) ECLI number. None of the cited (alleged) judgments relate to trade name law. Some ECLI numbers relate to criminal law judgments, while others do not exist at all. When asked, Dwaard (or its solicitor) stated that this was all caused by a problem converting a Word file to PDF. This explanation raises questions. The court leaves those questions and the question of whether this constitutes a violation of Article 21 of the Rules of Civil Procedure open, because Dwaard did not, on balance, benefit from the misrepresentation in the statement of defence.

Article 21 of the Code of Civil Procedure states: The parties are obliged to present the facts relevant to the decision completely and truthfully. If this obligation is not complied with, the court may draw the conclusions it deems appropriate.

What is clear here?

The lawyer in question got off lightly, as the court indicated that, regardless of the nonsense quotations, the decision in the case would not have been any different. If the court had considered that the case had been lost by the lawyer in question as a result of the breach of the duty of truthfulness, then professional misconduct would have been obvious.

This case once again highlights the danger for the legal profession of using AI to prepare court documents, following an earlier case in 2025 in which an American solicitor was fined US$ 2,500 by the Court of Appeal in the US state of Georgia for referring to nonsense case law generated by ChatGPT.

The use of AI by Dutch judges is also the focus of attention. The subdistrict court in Nijmegen used ChatGPT ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2024:3636 to determine the damages. The extent to which it is appropriate and sensible for the judiciary to use AI will continue to be a subject of debate.

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