Justice

Court of Cassation: ‘The misuse of AI constitutes professional negligence’

For the first time, the Court has ruled on cyber-hallucinations. The fine imposed on the negligent defence lawyer has been increased

by Giovanni Negri

24 June 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

The Court’s position
No exclusion of liability

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Aggravated offence and an increase in the financial penalty payable to the fines fund for a defence lawyer who supports their arguments with non-existent case law, the result of ‘digital hallucination’». For the first time, the Court of Cassation has gone into detail regarding the nature and consequences of the misuse of artificial intelligence in day-to-day defence practice.

The Court’s position

This was ruled by the Third Criminal Division in Judgment No. 23006, in which the Court clarified that the use of artificial intelligence tools does not exempt the defence lawyer from the professional duty to verify the veracity and relevance of the sources cited, and that the allegation of non-existent precedents, by distorting the proper adversarial process, hindering the examination of legality and compromising the minimum reliability that must underpin the defence submissions, is conduct indicative of a greater degree of fault compared to the ordinary raising of generic or merely repetitive grounds.

All these elements are consistent with the provision in Article 616 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows the penalty to be adjusted ‘taking into account the grounds for inadmissibility’ and with the constitutional principle that a financial penalty is entirely legitimate where the inadmissibility is attributable to culpable conduct on the part of the applicant.

From this perspective, an appeal based on fabricated case-law presents an additional element beyond mere vagueness or manifest lack of merit. In other words, this is not a matter of mere weakness of argument, ‘but a flaw in the appeal itself that affects its very status as a technically and professionally sound legal document: the allegation of non-existent precedents distorts the proper adversarial process, hinders the review of legality and betrays a failure to comply with the minimum duty to verify sources before filing the appeal”. In this situation, the ground for inadmissibility not only exists but constitutes the result of positively culpable conduct, incompatible with the scope of excusable error.

No exclusion of liability

The decisive point, the judgement emphasises, is that the use of artificial intelligence tools does not in itself preclude fault, because the professional who drafts and signs the appeal retains full control over the document and responsibility for its compliance with the standards of truth, relevance and specificity. If the defence counsel includes in the appeal judgments that have never been handed down, altered legal maxims or non-existent references, this does not constitute a situation comparable to an objectively unavoidable error through no fault of their own, but rather ‘manifest failure to verify, professional negligence and, at times, even unscrupulous use of the procedural instrument’.

Nor, as the Court of Cassation points out, can it be argued that the use of artificial intelligence creates a ‘free zone’ of exemption from liability. In fact, protection is afforded to those who incur grounds for inadmissibility through no fault of their own, but not to those who rely on tools recognised as fallible without human oversight of the sources cited. In this case, the error is not inevitable, but can be prevented through ordinary professional diligence: ‘It would have been sufficient to verify the actual existence of the decisions, their number, the section, the date and the relevant headnote. The absence of this check renders the fault not only established but also serious, as it affects the very core of the method used to draft the appeal to the Court of Cassation.”