Canadian Lawyer Fined $31,000 for Fabricated AI Court Precedents
The Legal Tribunal of the Canadian Bar Association imposed what the organization Courtready, which deals with access to justice issues, called "the largest cost award ever issued by any Canadian court or tribunal to date" on a lawyer for using AI-fabricated references to case law, writes Lawtimesnews.
In the case Mazaheri v. Law Society of Ontario, 2026 ONLSTH 112, the tribunal ruled that Shahr'yar Mazaheri, who represented himself, must "bear full responsibility for the consequences of his actions" and ordered him to pay CAD 31,150 in costs to the Law Society of Ontario.
Mazaheri, whose license was suspended in November 2024, initially filed motions to cancel or amend the temporary suspension and later to exclude evidence submitted by the Law Society of Ontario.
During the preparation of these documents, he used artificial intelligence to generate written explanations, additional clarifications, and affidavits without verifying the system's output. As a result, the lawyer cited "cases that do not exist, as well as real cases that had no relevance to the respondent's arguments."
The tribunal concluded that "irresponsible use of artificial intelligence is an additional and significantly aggravating factor when assessing his conduct in submitting these motions."
Record Fine and Rapid Increase in Number of Cases
According to Toronto lawyer and Courtready co-founder Tom Macintosh Zheng, the amount of $31,150 is an absolute record among financial sanctions related to AI use.
"Before this case, the largest sanction was imposed in Reddy v. Saroya — a 2026 Alberta Court of Appeal decision. At that time, the amount was $17,550," he noted.
Courtready maintains a database of so-called AI "hallucination" cases and sanctions for their use. These data were cited by the tribunal in its decision.
According to Zheng, seven such decisions were recorded in 2024, 87 in 2025, and 74 in just the first six months of 2026.
About 81% of such cases involve self-represented individuals. Meanwhile, 19%, or 32 decisions, were made against lawyers.
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