A negligence lawsuit against Raleigh involving a fallen tree branch could prompt a larger discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence in North Carolina’s legal system.
The city’s lawyers suggested in a court filing this week that the case might offer the North Carolina Court of Appeals a chance to warn lawyers against an “overreliance” on AI.
The case started with an accident in June 2022. A branch broke away from an oak tree in Raleigh’s Nash Square. It struck Michael Creech in the neck and upper back. He was paralyzed from the waist down, according to court filings.
Creech sued the city and three employees for negligence. A trial judge dismissed the case in January 2025. Creech appealed.
The AI issues first came to light when the city responded to Creech’s opening brief.
“The Court should view Plaintiff-Appellant’s principal brief with extreme skepticism,” Senior Associate City Attorney Andrew Seymour wrote on Oct. 2. “In an attempt to show error in the trial court’s decision, Plaintiff-Appellant not only misstates the law throughout his brief, but also — and most egregiously — cites to and relies upon multiple fictitious cases to support his baseless arguments.”
Seymour mentioned two fictitious cases: Feldman v. City of Fayetteville from 1979 and Polk v. Davison from 1993.
“Transposing numbers in a citation or misspelling a party’s name is one thing,” Seymour wrote. “But citing multiple cases that simply do not exist is something else altogether.”
Jason Burton, Creech’s lawyer, responded on Oct. 21 with a motion to correct the brief. “These citations were included inadvertently and without any intent to mislead this Court or opposing counsel,” Burton wrote.
Burton “was shocked to learn that two (2) unverified citations were inadvertently included” in his brief, he explained in a separate court filing. He attributed the mistake to a contract attorney who conducted manual research “supplemented by his use of a legal industry-specific large language model application known as Vincent AI.”
“I was aware at the time of filing that a contract attorney engaged by our firm utilized Vincint AI and/or other legal based software applications to conduct general legal research in the early stages of the briefing process but was unaware that the technology was utilized in compiling citations for a research memorandum that was incorporated into aspects of the Appellant’s Brief,” Burton added.
“At no point did my office, or anyone working on behalf of my office, knowingly incorporate non-existent cases or fictitious citations into the Appellant’s Brief,” he wrote.
Raleigh and its employees “neither consent to nor oppose” the motion to amend the original brief, according to a court filing Thursday. “The City-Appellees acknowledge there appears to be no North Carolina appellate decision addressing the use of or citation to non-existent, AI-generated cases in briefs filed with this Court.”
“The City Appellees recognize that issues involving the use of emerging technologies — particularly artificial-intelligence tools — are increasingly arising in litigation and appellate practice,” Seymour wrote. “The present issue illustrates some of the dangers that improvident reliance upon artificial intelligence can create for practitioners and the courts alike.”
“As the issue giving rise to the Appellant’s Motion appears to be one of first impression, the Court may view this as opportunity to deter future practitioners’ from overreliance on artificial intelligence tools for legal research and writing without independent verification prior to Court submission,” he added. “Ultimately, the City Appellees have full confidence that the Court will address the matter as it deems appropriate in light of the record, applicable Rules of Appellate Procedure, and guidance from the North Carolina State Bar concerning the use of artificial intelligence in the practice of law.”
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