Date of judgment: 

6 June 2025.

Court:

The King’s Bench; Divisional Court under the Hamid jurisdiction 

Legal Issue:

This judgment concerned the combined cases of the actual use (Ayinde) or suspected use (Al-Haroun) by lawyers of generative artificial intelligence (hereinafter “GenAI”) to produce written legal arguments or witness statements which were not checked by legal professionals.

Case 1: Ayinde

The Claimant, Ayinde, instituted judicial review proceedings against the London Borough of Haringey for its’ failure to provide interim accommodation pending a statutory review of a decision that he did not have a priority need for housing. The Claimants barrister submitted grounds which contained numerous citations that did not, in fact, exist. 

The Defendant’s solicitor and barrister requested copies of the cited cases but did not receive them, despite numerous email correspondences and phone calls. Though the claimant apologised for these errors, they stated, by email, that it was "improper to barter our client's legal position for cosmetic errors".

Outcome

It was not proved that the barrister used GenAI but the barrister did deny using it. The Court stated that the barrister did not provide “…a coherent explanation for what happened”. 

The Divisional Court did not initiate contempt proceeding as, first, there were factual issues which could not ‘easily’ be determined in summary proceedings for contempt of court and further there were questions relating to the potential failings on the part of those who had responsibility for training, supervising and ‘signing off’ the barrister.

The Barrister and solicitors were required to pay the Council £2,000 in wasted costs orders.

Case 2 : Al-Haroun

The claimant sought damages of £89.4 million for alleged breaches of a financial agreement against Qatar National Bank and QNB Capital.

An application to dispute the court’s jurisdiction and to strike out the claim/enter summary judgment was filed by the defendant. However, the application was dismissed as the Schedule of References contained 45 citations - 18 of which did not exist. 

The claimant and the solicitor apologised to the court and made clear they did not intend to mislead the court. The Divisional Court was rather concerned with the conduct of the Claimants lawyer on the basis that it was "extraordinary that the lawyer was relying on the client for accuracy of their legal research, rather than the other way around.” 

Outcome

The Court accepted the litigants' candour, apology and his acceptance of responsibility but stated that there was a clear ‘lamentable failure’ to carry out the basic requirement to check the accuracy of the cases that was put before the Court.

The Divisional Court decided that the threshold for contempt proceedings against the solicitor was not met, but that it would refer the claimant’s solicitors to the SRA. 

Note: Ayinde judgment was recently followed in UK and R (on the application of Munir) -v- Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT 81 (IAC).