A Crown Prosecution Service lawyer cited a court case that does not exist, after an AI summary from an internet search

The Guardian reports that a senior crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service cited a case, "R v J [2024] EWCA Crim 3529", that does not exist, in a High Court dispute over prosecuting an 11-year-old boy. She later said she had meant a real decision from 15 years earlier. The CPS says the error came from legal research on the internet, and that it ran an internal review. The court said the false citation did not change the outcome of the challenge.

• If you use ChatGPT, Gemini or a search summary for anything with legal, tax or contract consequences, open the original source it names and confirm the document exists before you rely on it.
• If a supplier, adviser or tenant quotes a rule or a case to you, ask for the link or reference and look it up yourself.

Source: The Guardian. This is our short summary of their reporting. The paragraphs marked "Our read" and the things to do are SeedFoundry's opinion. The summary is drafted with AI tools. The picture is our own graphic. How we source and credit