That's not a valid excuse, though. Lawyers are paid big bucks to think, not to assume. Otherwise you could do your litigation for free by just asking interested people on Twitter. I went to law school and had to drop out due to an injury & attendant medical costs; it's a crime (as in going to jail) for me to practice law without being licensed, no matter how good my work product might be.

Well, leaving aside whether a lot of people don't distrust and whether a lawyer would or should be among those people, lawyers typically don't cite things without checking them first. I work at a biglaw firm, can't imagine it never getting caught that the cases don't exist. This sounds like a midsize firm, should be fairly similar.

There are a few small law firms/sole prop type guys, however, who I have crossed paths with for whom this kind of stupidity and carelessness would be on brand though.

Guess he was just in a rush and figured this would be one of the 2/10 times he files something without at least taking a look at the opinions first, and it ended up being a massive error.

A lot of Google's top suggested results / autogenerated answers tell you nonsense or misunderstandings as well.