When a Singapore court fines a lawyer for citing a case that does not exist, most business owners assume it is a problem for the legal profession to sort out among itself. It is not. If your company is ever party to a court application, whether an oppression remedy claim under the Companies Act 1967, a winding up petition, or a straightforward debt recovery action, the submissions filed on your behalf are meant to be built on real, verifiable authority. When they are not, the consequences (wasted costs, damaged credibility before the judge, and delay) land on the client as much as the lawyer.
In 2025, the Singapore courts dealt with more than one instance of counsel citing case authorities that turned out to be fabricated, apparently the product of unverified generative AI research. The courts responded firmly, and the judiciary has since sharpened its public guidance on how AI tools may and may not be used in litigation. For business owners who may one day find themselves on either side of a company dispute, understanding what happened, and what it means for how you engage your lawyers, is a practical risk-management issue, not a legal curiosity.
This article summarises the sanction, explains the Singapore judiciary’s guidance on generative AI in court documents, and sets out what business owners should ask their lawyers before their name goes on submissions filed in court.
What actually happened
In September 2025, the General Division of the High Court dealt with a case, Tajudin bin Gulam Rasul and another v Suriaya bte Haja Mohideen [2025] SGHCR 33, arising out of an application to set aside a default judgment. Counsel for the claimants filed written submissions that cited a case said to support a particular legal proposition. When opposing counsel tried to trace the citation, it turned out the case did not exist. The name and citation had been generated by an AI tool used in preparing the submissions, and had never been checked against an actual law report or database.
The Assistant Registrar hearing the matter found that citing a fictitious authority, whether generated by AI or otherwise, is impermissible full stop. Applying the established test for whether a costs order should be made personally against counsel, the court found the conduct improper, unreasonable and negligent: the citation was never verified against the official case law database, it was left out of the bundle of authorities, and when the error surfaced, counsel initially described it as a mere clerical slip rather than owning up to its true origin. The court ordered counsel to personally pay costs to the other side, separate from any costs order against the client, and directed that both sets of lawyers give their clients a copy of the judgement.
This was not an isolated episode. Around the same period, a separate civil suit, involving a claim by the executors of an estate to recover money said to have been lent to a group of individuals and a company, saw two lawyers ordered to pay a personal costs sum each after closing submissions cited legal cases that could not be traced: one had a name that did not exist at all, another combined a genuine case name with a citation belonging to a different case entirely. In both matters, the fabricated authorities were caught not by the court, but by opposing counsel, who had to spend time and client money running down citations that turned out to be dead ends.
Two points stand out for a business owner. First, both matters were ordinary civil commercial disputes, a set-aside application and a loan recovery claim touching a company, of the kind any trading company could plausibly become entangled in. Second, the personal costs order fell on the lawyer, not the client, because the courts treat verification of legal authority as a non-delegable professional duty. That does not mean the client escapes unscathed: delay, reputational friction with the other side, and a judge whose confidence in your case has taken a knock are all client-side costs that a costs order does not capture.
The judiciary’s guidance on AI in court documents
The Singapore courts have not banned the use of generative AI in litigation. Instead, the judiciary issued a formal guide, effective from 1 October 2024 and applicable across the Supreme Court, the State Courts and the Family Justice Courts, setting out the principles court users must follow when generative AI tools are used in preparing court documents.
The core principle: verification is personal and non-delegable
The guidance is unambiguous on one point: however a document is prepared, whoever signs and files it takes full responsibility for its accuracy. An AI tool can assist with drafting, summarising or research, but it cannot verify itself, and asking a second AI tool to check the first one’s output is not an acceptable substitute for checking the primary source. In practice, that means every case citation should be traced back to an official record, such as LawNet or Singapore Statutes Online, before it is filed.
A “traffic light” approach to AI use in the justice system
More broadly, the Chief Justice has spoken publicly of a “traffic light” framework the judiciary is using to think about where AI belongs in the justice system:
- Red (not for delegation): using AI to decide cases or predict outcomes is off the table. Judicial decision-making stays with the judge.
- Amber (proceed with caution): using AI to help draft submissions, to help self-represented litigants structure an argument, or to summarise lengthy submissions for a judge, sits in this zone. It is permitted, but only with independent human verification at every step.
- Green (encouraged, with normal diligence): using AI for evidence review, document summarisation and speech-to-text transcription is viewed favourably, since a human is still checking the underlying material.
Drafting a company’s court submissions falls squarely in the amber zone. AI-assisted drafting is not prohibited, but the guidance and the sanctions handed down both point the same way: the lawyer, and by extension the firm, must independently confirm every fact, figure and citation before it goes in front of a judge.
Why this matters for business owners, not just lawyers
Company owners tend to encounter litigation in a narrow set of scenarios: a minority shareholder dispute escalating into a section 216 oppression claim, a director considering a derivative action on the company’s behalf, a creditor threatening winding up over a disputed debt, or a company enforcing or defending a commercial contract. In each, the submissions filed carry your company’s name. If they rest on a citation that unravels under scrutiny, three things happen, and none of them are good.
Credibility damage. A judge who catches one fabricated or unreliable citation will read everything else in your submissions more sceptically. In a fact-sensitive dispute, such as most oppression or shareholder disputes are, credibility with the bench is often the whole game.
Costs exposure. Even where a personal costs order lands on counsel rather than the client, the client still absorbs the knock-on costs of delay and adjourned hearings, and potentially an adverse costs order against the company itself if opposing counsel argues the client’s own conduct was also unreasonable.
Timeline slippage. Court applications involving companies, whether restoring a company’s registers and records, setting aside a statutory demand, or a shareholder dispute, are frequently time-sensitive. A dispute over a citation’s authenticity, raised mid-hearing, can derail a hearing date that took months to secure.
Practical questions to ask your lawyers
None of this requires you to become a legal technologist. It does mean asking a few direct questions before your company’s name goes onto court submissions.
1. How is AI used in preparing our submissions?
A reputable Singapore law firm should be able to answer this plainly. There is nothing improper about using AI tools for first-draft research, document review or summarisation, provided it sits within the amber-zone caution the judiciary has set out.
2. How is every citation verified?
Ask whether case authorities are checked against LawNet, Singapore Statutes Online, or an equivalent official source, rather than taken on trust from a research tool’s output. This is a fair question for a client to ask, and any competent litigation team will have an answer ready.
3. Who signs off, and how?
Verification is meant to be personal, not something junior staff handle unsupervised. Ask who reviews the final draft before it is filed, and whether that review specifically includes checking cited authorities.
4. What happens if an error is found?
The 2025 case turned partly on candour: the court took a dim view of an initial attempt to characterise a fabricated citation as a typographical slip. If an error surfaces, prompt and complete disclosure to the court, rather than a quiet correction, is what the judiciary expects, and what protects your company’s credibility in the long run.
The broader lesson for company litigation
This is not a reason to distrust AI-assisted legal work, nor to avoid lawyers who use modern research tools. It is a reminder that a company involved in a court application, on either side, benefits from lawyers who treat verification as non-negotiable and who are transparent about their working methods. The practical takeaway: always engage a qualified Singapore Advocate & Solicitor for any actual dispute, ask about their verification process up front, and treat a lawyer’s willingness to explain it as a reasonable proxy for the diligence they will bring to your case.
If your company is facing a shareholder dispute, a winding up application, or any other court process, the corporate housekeeping around the dispute matters too: an up to date ACRA-lodged register of members, properly minuted resolutions, and a constitution that reflects your actual governance arrangements all reduce the surface area for a dispute to escalate in the first place.
How Raffles Corporate Services can help
Raffles Corporate Services does not conduct litigation, and if your company faces a genuine court dispute, we will always point you to a qualified Singapore Advocate & Solicitor. What we do handle is the corporate secretarial foundation that keeps a company’s records, resolutions and registers in order, so that if a dispute ever escalates to court, your paper trail supports your position rather than undermining it. If you would like a corporate secretarial health check ahead of a shareholder disagreement, visit Raffles Corporate Services to speak with our team.
For further reading on related company litigation and governance topics, see our articles on the oppression remedy under section 216 of the Companies Act, derivative actions under section 216A, restoring a struck-off company’s statutory registers and records, disputed debts and winding up applications under the AnAn standard, and the Corporate Service Providers Act 2024 and what it means for clients.
Business owners choosing counsel for the first time may also find it useful to speak with an independent legal adviser such as Just Follow Law, or to review their secretarial records with Singapore Secretary Services before matters reach the courtroom.
Frequently asked questions
Does this mean my lawyers cannot use AI at all?
No. The judiciary’s guidance permits AI-assisted drafting and research, provided every output is independently verified before filing. The problem in the 2025 cases was not that AI was used, it was that its output was not checked.
Will I personally be liable if my lawyer cites a fabricated case?
The 2025 costs orders were against the lawyers personally, reflecting the courts’ view that verification is a non-delegable professional duty. That said, a client can still face its own costs exposure and reputational damage if a case is delayed or weakened, so it is in every business owner’s interest to ask about verification practices upfront.
What should I do if I am already in a dispute involving my company?
Engage a qualified Singapore Advocate & Solicitor experienced in company litigation, and ask directly how AI tools, if used, are verified before submissions are filed. Keeping your company’s statutory records and resolutions in order strengthens your position regardless of how the dispute unfolds.
The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services