FICTITIOUS LAW REPORTS: THE NEW GAME IN TOWN

This piece first appeared in my twice weekly Newsletter – Kerry On Costs… And So Much More…

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In a recent case in Manchester a Litigant in Person presented fictitious case reports based on answers received from the Chat GPT chat box – see Law Society Gazette, 29 May 2023.

One case was completely fabricated but the others were real case names but with false quotes.

The Litigant in Person was unaware of this and was not penalised.

We spoke to Salisbury’s Law Reports who advertised that they could find cases to suit any legal argument – by making them up.

Q

Isn’t this illegal?

A

No, Charles Dickens made up cases. John Grisham makes up cases. It is called fiction – in fact, we use a lot of John Grisham’s stuff.

Q

But that is different from telling people that these are real cases to cite in court.

A

We don’t do that; we just say – “This may be of interest to you”. We are a sort of online McNaughten Friend.

Q

You mean a Mckenzie Friend.

A

No – McNaughten Friend, as in its namesake for the insanity rules.

Q

What cases have been relieved by the court that seemed so unlikely that no one would believe them?

A

We have had a couple recently.

In one we made up, the High Court threw out a case because the solicitors had paid the old fee, £28 less than the new one, when the court was closed, and no one could help. That was a corker!

In another one, the High Court held that a claimant was out of time for serving the claim form even before he received it because the Court took over four months to serve it and backdated it!

The Court of Appeal overturned it, but they really thought it was a real case!

Q

But they were real cases!

A

Really, who can tell now?

Our favourite now is creating a whole area of fictitious law.

Credit Hire is our best one.

You own an old banger worth £500, get it crashed and claim £1,000 a day Credit Hire charges!

It is our best ever.

In one of our cases a dinky toy car was damaged in our customer’s front room, and she got £4 Billion Credit Hire charges.

Q

Have you had any ideas that even you thought was so far out that you could not use them?

A

Oh yes. Plenty. We had this idea of the High Court saying that people had to choose between eating and feeding their family or paying the Employment Tribunal court fee to bring an unfair dismissal claim.

Another one was that the High Court disallowed all costs because a party was five minutes late filing their budget.

Loads of stuff like that, but obviously we could not use those ideas, as they are ridiculous and would damage our credibility.

Footnote

A party running such an operation commits no offence.

A litigant presenting such submissions without knowing that they are false commits no offence.

Digital AI freaks – be careful what you wish for.