AI Hallucination Cases

The court found that the majority of legal authorities in appellant counsel's reply brief were incorrect or did not support the propositions for which they were cited. The court struck the reply brief, imposed monetary sanctions of $5,070, and directed a copy of the opinion be forwarded to the State Bar.

Counsel had already been sanctioned in different case, and professed having gone through CLE on generative AI.

"Unfortunately, we're finding this problem arising more and more frequently […] When a lawyer cites imaginary legal authorities to our court as if they were law, we are compelled to refer that lawyer to the Bar because of the professional rules of conduct.

It doesn't take much moral imagination to understand why. As judges, we rely on attorneys to ethically represent their clients. We expect that representation to be zealous, honest, and competent. Indeed, lawyers owe the courts and their clients a duty to practice with competence and candor. By signing an appellate brief, a lawyer certifies that he or she has read the document and that to the best of the lawyer's knowledge, information, and belief there are "good grounds to support the document."

These ethical requirements are not excused simply because a computer program generated a faulty or misleading legal analysis. Nor is it an excuse that the attorney did not intend to mislead the court. "To state the obvious, it is a fundamental duty of attorneys to read the legal authorities they cite in appellate briefs or any other court filings to determine that the authorities stand for the propositions for which they are cited."

Obviously, that didn't happen when Ms. McLane filed this answer brief. Instead, counsel "fundamentally abdicated" her duty to the court and her client when she submitted this filing without verifying that the three cases cited in her brief said what she claimed they said. Accordingly, it is our duty to refer this matter to the Florida Bar to proceed as it deems appropriate."

See story here and here.

(Motion for sanctions available here.)

"The court’s focus here is not the misuse of artificial intelligence to conduct unreliable legal research and drafting. It is the inexcusable submission of false authority and factual arguments to the court, the subsequent misrepresentations about the extent of the improper conduct, and the failure to take prompt responsibility for errors once discovered. The obligations on officers of the court at issue here precede by centuries the age of electronic research and artificial intelligence.

The failures to meet those obligations do serious damage to the respect for the legal profession, and they merit sanctions. The most serious sanctionable conduct consists of actions taken after the attorneys had time to consider the consequences of submitting false statements of law and facts to the court, and had time to discover and disclose the full extent of the errors in citations and in factual assertions.

[...]

Artificial Intelligence is not the cause of bad legal practice. Lawyers performed their obligations well and performed their obligations poorly before Al, before electronic research platforms, before on-line publication of case law, and before the development of the West Key Number System or Shepard’s indexes.

Submission of false legal citations and demonstrably false factual claims pose a grave threat to the judicial branch. People are skeptical of institutions, and the legal profession is not exempt. We are duty-bound to attend to the integrity the courts so that close scrutiny reveals a model of honesty, accountability, and truth-seeking.

The authority of the courts relies on public confidence that rulings are just and are grounded in the law, not on the whims of judges. “[A] lawyer should further the public’s understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.” (IRPC Preamble, par. 6) Officers of the court cannot become comfortable with careless or deliberate misrepresentation of facts or the law."

Underlying report & Recommendations can be found here.

"12) The Al tool possibly used was sophisticated enough to include pinpoint citations to precedential Third Circuit authority.
13) Fortunately for Boehm , the cases cited in his motion are very real decisions by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
14) Unfortunately for Boehm, these cases are misrepresented in his motion and his motion also contains false quotations from these opinions."