Victoria Place Flats RTM Company Ltd & ors v Assethold Limited
First-tier Tribunal · Oct 23, 2025
- Jurisdiction
- international
- Court
- First-tier Tribunal
- Record ID
- victoria-place-flats-rtm-company-ltd-ors-v-assethold-limited-2025-10-23
- Observed outcome
- The Tribunal determined that the disputed service and administration charges were not payable by the applicants, ordered the respondent to pay £337 in tribunal fee reimbursements, and issued section 20C and paragraph 5A orders preventing the respondent from passing legal costs to the lessees.
- Known monetary consequence
- £337
Why this matter warrants attention
The Tribunal identified that the respondent's representative used Microsoft M365 Copilot to generate legal research, which resulted in the submission of fabricated Court of Appeal citations and invalid case references. The judge determined these submissions were unreliable, rejected the arguments, and admonished the representative for failing to verify AI-generated content before presenting it to the court.
The judge reasoned that the representative's reliance on 'Qdime' was misplaced because the case involved a tripartite management company rather than an RTM company. The judge verified the AI's tendency to hallucinate by replicating the representative's search queries, confirming the AI produced non-existent EWCA citations and incorrect references, leading to the conclusion that the representative had not read the underlying authorities.
Microsoft Copilot hallucinates EWCA citations — enterprise AI is not a verification substitute.
Failure modes and consequences
- Fake Citations
- Misrepresented Authority
- Contract
- Trial
- None Adjudicated
- AI attribution
- Admitted
- Recorded tool
- Microsoft M365 Copilot
- Known monetary consequence
- £337
- Procedural posture
- First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) determination of liability for service and administration charges under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.
Damien Charlotin case archive
Publisher document archive. The recorded document is hosted in the upstream publisher archive.
Open underlying sourceA recorded source link is not a substitute for checking the underlying order, filing, opinion, or disciplinary record.
What this record does—and does not—establish
Judge tested Microsoft M365 Copilot.
The record summarizes the outcome described in the linked public source. The recorded document is hosted in the upstream publisher archive. This page is not a substitute for the complete docket, subsequent history, or jurisdiction-specific advice.
Latest evidence review: Primary Document Verified (high confidence).
Controls suggested by the public record
- Independently verify the existence and citation of every case law authority cited in AI-generated research.
- Read the full text of any cited authority to ensure it is relevant to the specific statutory or factual context of the case.
- Implement mandatory verification protocols for all legal submissions drafted with the assistance of generative AI tools.
- Maintain a record of the original source material for all legal propositions presented to the tribunal.