Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. Opposition politician and seasoned lawyer Welshman Ncube has issued an apology to the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe after a legal brief submitted under his direction was found to contain fabricated case law and misinterpretations generated by artificial intelligence.
The error occurred in the case Pulserate Investments (Pvt) Ltd v Andrew Zuze and Others [SC202/25], where Ncube was representing the appellant.
The court filing listed twelve cases that were either non-existent or irrelevant to the legal arguments presented.
In a letter dated 3 July 2025, addressed to the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Ncube accepted full and unequivocal responsibility for the mistake. He wrote:
I write to request that you kindly place this letter of apology before their Lordships before whom the above matter will be placed for adjudication.
I wish to express my profound regret and apology to the Court for the citation of defective and non-existent cases in the Heads of Argument I prepared and caused to be filed on behalf of Appellant in this matter. These Heads of Argument contained multiple case citations that were either non-existent or defectively cited, as correctly identified by the 1st Respondent in his Heads of Argument.
I take full and unequivocal responsibility for these errors, which arose from the fact that I failed to check the authenticity of the case law authorities which were presented to me by my researcher whom I had assigned to research and find case law authorities for the propositions I had made in the draft Heads of Argument I had prepared. It never occurred to me that it was possible for a graduate researcher to present to me non-existent and defective case law authorities given the training we go through as lawyers and hence my negligent failure to check the authenticity of the cases.
Upon perusing 1st Respondent’s Heads of Argument I inquired of my researcher how it is that he could have cited non-existent case law authorities and case law authorities which did not support the propositions they were being cited for and his response was that he had used Artificial Intelligence to do the research and had not sought to verify the material he was being fed by Artificial Intelligence.
Ncube said the errors were neither intentional nor aimed at misleading the Court or prejudicing any party involved in the matter. He said:
I would like to emphasise that these grievous errors were not deliberate or motivated by any intention to mislead the Court or to prejudice any party involved in this matter. Rather they represent a catastrophic lapse in professional judgement. There is no excuse that can justify such an error and I do not seek to minimise the gravity of this breach of professional standards. It is difficult to imagine anything more embarrassing to me personally as Senior Counsel and officer of this Honourable Court.
I am very aware that the integrity of all legal proceedings depends absolutely on the accuracy of authorities cited. The error is particularly regrettable given that this matter involves substantive legal issues that deserve to be heard and determined on their merits based on sound legal argument, without the distraction of the non-existent and defective cases cited.
I humbly submit this sincere apology to the Court as well as to Counsel for 1st Respondent who had to endure the agony and verifying on these non-existent and non-supportive cases.
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