A company told the Bombay High Court that, to the best of its knowledge, two Supreme Court judgments cited in a customs order of 11 August 2026 are in no law report or database. It alleges AI was used. On 30 October 2026 the court cancelled the customs order by consent of both sides; its order records that allegation but no finding on it. Below: what it leaves out.
Think of a footnote in a contract: it is only as good as the book it points to.
In this court order, a company says a customs order cited two Supreme Court judgments that, to the best of the company's knowledge, are not in any law report or database, and says the copies it asked for were not provided. The court recorded that as the company's case. On 30 October 2026 it cancelled the customs order, with both sides agreeing.
The court did not say how the judgments came to be cited, and it did not find that AI was involved; the company alleges it. Below: what the order says, what it leaves out, and a check you can run on your own documents.
Status as of November 11, 2026. This covers one order of an Indian High Court about an Indian customs case. It is not legal advice: we are not lawyers.
Why is a court order on a site about AI systems? The order quotes Supreme Court passages about checking AI-produced citations. Opening a source before you rely on it is a habit any business can use, whenever documents it sends or receives cite other documents.
What is this order?
It is a four-page order of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, in Writ Petition No. 5093 of 2026. (The order's reference code, 2026:BHC-OS:24069-DB, is in the Sources.) In plain terms, a writ petition asks a High Court to look at a public authority's decision. This one challenges a customs order, which the court's text calls an "Order-in-Original dated 11th August, 2026". The court's order is dated 30 October 2026 and was uploaded on 5 November 2026.
Two sides appear. The petitioner is a company that challenged the customs order. The respondents are a customs commissioner (Respondent No. 1 in the order) and the Union of India (Respondent No. 2). The order names people, and the PDF names the company; we leave all names out. The customs dispute itself is not decided, and the names are not the point.
What happened, and when?
| Date as the order prints it | What the order says |
|---|---|
| 11th August, 2026 | The date of the customs order that the petition challenges. The order calls it an "Order-in-Original". |
| 1st September, 2026 | A letter from the petitioner to Respondent No. 1 asking for copies of the two judgments. In the petitioner's case, as the order records it, the copies "were not provided". |
| 30th October, 2026 | The date of the order. The respondents' counsel "fairly submits that the impugned Order can be quashed and set aside" (impugned means challenged). "By consent of both the parties", the customs order is "quashed and set aside". |
| 5th November, 2026 | The order directs the petitioner to appear before Respondent No. 1 at 11:00 a.m. This is also the upload date printed in the footer of the PDF. |
| "eight weeks from 5th November, 2026" | The order says: "The proceedings be concluded within a period of eight weeks from 5th November, 2026." Counting eight weeks from November 5 reaches December 31, 2026 (our arithmetic: 5 November plus 56 days). How a legal deadline is counted is for counsel. |
November 5 has passed. The pages we read do not say what happened at or after that appearance.
What does the petitioner say?
The order sets out "the case of the Petitioner". The petitioner says the customs order "was passed by taking recourse to Artificial Intelligence (AI) without independent application of mind" (our plain-words gloss: without an official weighing the case personally). Its counsel cites two Supreme Court judgments, "as an example", that the customs order relies on. The petitioner says that, to the best of its knowledge, they are not in "any Law Report or database" (a law report is a published collection of court judgments), and that "it appears to be a hallucination of AI".
This is the petitioner's case, in the court's wording. The same paragraph records that the petitioner wrote on 1 September 2026 to ask for copies of the judgments, and that the copies "were not provided". The court wrote this down as the company's case. The order does not rule on it.
The order does not name the two judgments or give their citations.
What did the court decide?
The respondents' counsel, the order says, "fairly submits that the impugned Order can be quashed and set aside" and that the matter can go back to the first respondent "for passing of a fresh Order". Then the court writes: "By consent of both the parties", the customs order "is quashed and set aside". Quashed means cancelled.
The order records the petitioner's allegation that AI was used; the pages we read do not record any finding or admission on that point.
In the part that decides the petition (paragraphs 3 to 6), the order gives no ground beyond that consent, and it decides nothing about the customs dispute itself. It reproduces Supreme Court passages, but the pages we read do not say that the court relied on them for the quashing. The order directs the petitioner to appear before the commissioner, who is to fix the next hearing. Its last paragraph says the writ petition "stands disposed of" (the court's own phrase for finishing the petition before it). We do not interpret the order's legal effect.
Which two judgments are meant?
Two different sets of judgments appear in the order, and they are easy to mix up.
- The two the petitioner says are in no law report or database. These are the ones the customs order is said to cite. The order does not name them, and we did not look for them.
- The Supreme Court judgment the order quotes. The petitioner's counsel relied on a 2026 Supreme Court judgment, which the order cites as "2026 INSC 947" (a reference code for the judgment). The order prints passages from it, including excerpts from an earlier Supreme Court judgment. These are the Supreme Court's words, not the Bombay court's. We read them only as the order prints them.
What do the printed passages say? In the excerpt from the earlier Supreme Court judgment, the court calls for a "zero-tolerance mode" for citing or using precedents produced by artificial intelligence "without verification". It adds that this earlier judgment "shall have no bearing on the rightful use of artificial intelligence". A second passage, from the 2026 INSC 947 judgment itself, compares AI to training wheels and warns against handing it the pilot's seat. The order does not say whether, or how, the Bombay court applies these passages to this case.
What does the order leave out?
Several things a reader might expect are not there. Neither copy of the order that we read (Verdictum and MediaNama) states:
- that AI was used (it records only the petitioner's allegation);
- which tool, if any, was used, or by whom;
- whether the two judgments were later produced;
- what the customs order decided or demanded, or any amount involved;
- whether any official faces any consequence;
- whether the court applies the quoted Supreme Court passages to this case;
- what happened on 5 November.
What can you do this week?
The order gives no advice. These steps come from the events it records; anything marked "in our reading" is ours.
Do this week
Three habits for an owner or team lead. This is not legal advice.
- In our reading, before any document with a legal citation leaves your company, have a person open each cited case, law or rule at its original source and check that it exists and says what the document says it says. This applies whoever, or whatever tool, drafted the document.
- When someone cites a case or rule against you, ask for a copy in writing. That is the petitioner's own step in the order: it wrote on 1 September 2026 to ask for copies of the two judgments. In our reading, keep the date of your request and any reply.
- In our reading, name one person who is accountable for any document an AI tool helped draft, and write down who checked its citations. We are not lawyers. For deadlines, notices or your own proceedings, ask your counsel.
How do we know?
On November 11, 2026 we read the order as hosted by Verdictum, whose PDF footer prints "Uploaded on - 05/11/2026", and compared it with a second copy hosted by MediaNama. The text matched. We call it an order; the PDF's heading reads "JUDGMENT". Bar and Bench (November 7) and MediaNama (November 11) reported on it; we used them only to find the order and took no facts from them. We did not open the court's own website, the Supreme Court judgments quoted in the order, the petition or the customs order. So everything here is what the order itself records. We tested nothing, and we cannot say whether any allegation is true. Pages can change.
Read next
How often AI models state things that are wrong, measured: the AI failure rate, decoded. The same human-check lesson in another setting: Google's agent skill scanning tells developers to review its findings. How to build the check into the process: why AI agents break in production. More cases are in the AI Failures hub.
If your own team builds software that answers from documents, our LLM integration page describes the citations and checks we build into such answers.
Sources
- Order of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay in Writ Petition No. 5093 of 2026 (neutral citation 2026:BHC-OS:24069-DB), dated 30 October 2026, uploaded 5 November 2026, as hosted by Verdictum (PDF, 4 pages), read November 11, 2026
- The same order, neutral citation 2026:BHC-OS:24069-DB, second copy hosted by MediaNama (PDF, 4 pages), compared with the first, read November 11, 2026; reachable from the MediaNama report listed below
- Bar and Bench, report on the order, published November 7, 2026 (used to find the order; no facts taken), read November 11, 2026
- MediaNama, report on the order, November 11, 2026 (used to find a second copy; no facts taken), read November 11, 2026