Basko v. Civic Sherman LLC

What is the current procedural posture?

In a decision dated September 18, 2025 and filed October 2, 2025, Justice Devin P. Cohen denied the AF Defendants' motion in full: the lease documents did not conclusively dispose of the claims, and with no party yet deposed there were triable issues of fact about the AF Defendants' relationship to the work. On the citation, the court found that the reply papers provided "what appears to be a fictitious citation, including what appears to be a fabricated holding in the citation's parenthetical," quoted Mata v. Avianca on the harms that "flow from the submission of fake opinions," and quoted 22 NYCRR 130-1.1 (a), which permits costs and financial sanctions for frivolous conduct, with a cross-reference to Rule 3.3 (a) (1) of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct. It concluded that it "is well within its discretion to sanction counsel for such conduct" and directed all sides to appear on October 1, 2025 "for a hearing to address the question of appropriate costs and/or sanctions." The decision imposes no sanction itself. No later decision on the hearing was located.

Why does Basko v. Civic Sherman LLC matter for law firms using AI?

The court dealt with the citation after deciding the motion on the merits. The AF Defendants’ motion failed because their lease documents left open whether they had possessory rights or a hand in the construction, and because no party had been deposed. The citation issue came from the reply papers, where the AF Defendants cited Torres v. New York City Housing Authority for a Labor Law proposition about out-of-possession owners. The court’s footnote traced the problem: the real Torres decision sits at 199 A.D.3d 852, runs two pages, and does not address the Labor Law liability of an out-of-possession landlord, while the cited page, 1002, contains an unrelated parental-access decision.

The court’s language is measured. It described the citation as “what appears to be a fictitious citation, including what appears to be a fabricated holding in the citation’s parenthetical,” and it did not mention artificial intelligence. The Charlotin tracker’s AI attribution is its own inference. What the court did say firmly is that it was “not convinced that this was a mere scrivener’s error,” and it quoted Mata v. Avianca’s catalogue of the harms caused by fake opinions, including the waste of the court’s time and the harm to courts “whose names are falsely invoked.”

The decision stops short of a sanction. It quotes 22 NYCRR 130-1.1 (a), notes the court’s discretion to award costs or impose financial sanctions for frivolous conduct, and directs all sides to appear for a hearing on “appropriate costs and/or sanctions.” No later decision was located, so the result of that hearing is unknown. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that, in this case, a single mis-cited authority in a reply brief was enough for the court to schedule a sanctions hearing on its own initiative.