Well this is the largest costs award that I’ve seen so far – awarded against a lawyer in their personal capacity for using unverified authorities in a factum.
($17,550).
Reddy v Saroya, 2026 ABCA 20, online:
[8] Here, while the appellant did not ultimately rely on his initial factum before the panel during the hearing, the unchecked use of AI undeniably resulted in a misleading factum being filed with the Court and led to a waste of time and resources. The respondent had to search for cases that do not exist and address this issue in its initial factum. The Case Management Officer had to deal with the issue. When the amended factum was filed, it went beyond correcting the AI errors and augmented the substantive arguments made. This required the respondent to seek further guidance from the Case Management Officer about the nature of the changes, and to address these augmentations in the supplemental factum.
[11] Moreover, we cannot agree that this case involves “mere inadvertence”. Factums must include a table of authorities with a hyperlink to each authority cited, or copies or extracts of any authorities for which a hyperlink is not available: Rules, r 14.25(1)(h). If the appellant had complied with this rule, the non-existent cases would have been immediately identified. That did not occur, and as a result nearly half of the cases listed in the table of authorities were non-existent.
[12] While it seems that the use of a contractor caused timing issues for the appellant’s lead counsel, that did not absolve him of the need to adequately review work prepared by someone else prior to filing it with the Court. A lawyer should allow time for contingencies arising in their practice. Once the factum was filed, if there was any doubt as to the adequacy of the initial review, it was incumbent on counsel to go check again and correct any misleading information. Nor does the use of a contractor explain the appellant’s lead counsel’s response when initially contacted by counsel to the respondent, in which he suggested that typographical or similar errors served as an explanation without thoroughly investigating the issue immediately.
[13] Finally, the appellant added substantive content to the amended factum that could have been included in the initial factum, and that went well beyond correcting the references to non-existent cases. While it followed from the Case Management Officer’s direction that some changes were to be made, the extent of these changes took unfair advantage of the opportunity the appellant had been provided and put the respondent in a difficult position. This exacerbated the seriousness of the misconduct and its implications for the proper administration of justice.
