Welshman Ncube apologises to Supreme Court over AI-Generated fake case references

ZIMSPHERE

Lawyer and opposition Citizens Coalition for Change leader Welshman Ncube has issued a formal apology to the Supreme Court after submitting legal papers containing non-existent case law, which he attributed to unverified research generated by artificial intelligence.

In a letter dated July 3, addressed to the registrar of the Supreme Court, Ncube took full responsibility for filing heads of argument in the case Pulserate Investments (Pvt) Ltd v Andrew Zuze and Others [SC202/25] that included multiple defective and fictitious citations.

"I wish to express my profound regret and apology to the Court for the citation of defective and non-existent cases in the Heads of Argument I prepared and caused to be filed on behalf of Appellant in this matter," Ncube wrote. 

"These Heads of Argument contained multiple case citations that were either non-existent or defectively cited, as correctly identified by the 1st Respondent in his Heads of Argument."

He explained that the erroneous references were provided by a graduate researcher he had tasked with sourcing case law, but admitted he failed to verify the authenticity of the material.

“Upon perusing 1st Respondent’s Heads of Argument I inquired of my researcher how it is that he could have cited non-existent case law authorities and case law authorities which did not support the propositions they were being cited for and his response was that he had used Artificial Intelligence to do the research and had not sought to verify the material he was being fed or given by Artificial Intelligence,” Ncube said.

Ncube emphasised that the mistake was not deliberate or intended to mislead the court, describing it instead as “a catastrophic lapse in professional judgment.” He also said that it never occurred to him that such a grave mistake could be made a graduate researcher "given the training we go through as lawyers and hence my negligent failure to check the authenticity of the cases".

The defective/fictitious case law that was generated by AI

"It is difficult to imagine anything more embarrassing to me personally as Senior Counsel and officer of this Honourable Court," he wrote.

"I am very aware that the integrity of all legal proceedings depends absolutely on the accuracy of authorities cited. The error is particularly regrettable given that this matter involves substantive legal issues that deserve to be heard and determined on their merits based on sound legal argument, without the distraction of the non-existent and defective cases cited."

He also extended an apology to counsel for the first respondent, who had flagged the erroneous citations.

"I humbly submit this sincere apology to the Court as well as to Counsel for 1st Respondent, who had to endure the agony of verifying these non-existent and non-supportive cases," Ncube wrote.