MISSISSIPPI – A federal judge in Mississippi has punished all four lawyers on opposing sides in a civil trial and cancelled the proceedings after some of them, relying on artificial intelligence, cited fake legal cases in court filings.
Two of the lawyers have been barred for two years from appearing in the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi for their conduct, while all four were removed from the case and fined.
The case stemmed from a 2023 breach of contract lawsuit over legal fees that Tom Withers III, a Louisiana lawyer, claimed he was never paid by the city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, connected to a solar power development project.
Withers was not one of the lawyers who was disciplined, but both attorneys who were representing him in the case – Kathleen M. Wilson and Shauncey Hunter Ridgeway – were punished, as well as two lawyers for the city, Kathryn Y. Williams and Mark McClinton.
In an order filed on June 8, Sharion Aycock, a senior US District Court judge, wrote that the four lawyers had violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure when they certified that the information in their filings was factual.
“This case presents the court with an unusual scenario – attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,” Aycock wrote.
The case is emblematic of the conundrum that many institutions are facing over the use of artificial intelligence for both research and written materials, including in the judicial system, the business world and academia.
In April, an elite Wall Street law firm apologised to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence.
In the Mississippi case, the disciplinary actions were reported earlier by 404 Media and Robert Freund, a lawyer who tracks the misuse of AI in legal cases.
Wilson and Williams acknowledged during a hearing in January that they had not verified the authenticity of some of the cases they referred to in court filings, Aycock noted.
Neither responded to a request for comment on June 9. Both were barred for two years by Aycock, who fined Wilson US$2,500 (S$3,200) and Williams US$3,500.
Each was granted temporary admission to participate in the case in Mississippi because they hold law licences in Louisiana and Texas.
Aycock said Wilson told her that she had used First Drafts, an AI-powered program for drafting legal documents, while writing a motion that contained two citations to nonexistent cases, which are known as hallucinatory citations.
When confronted about those falsehoods, the judge said, Wilson claimed she was “unaware that AI could produce hallucinated cases and explained that she did not even know what a hallucinated case was”.
First Drafts did not immediately respond to a request for comment on June 9.
Aycock noted that Wilson was also disciplined in April by the US Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Louisiana for similar actions.
“Her continued AI misuse demonstrates an extreme dereliction of professional responsibility on her part,” the judge wrote.
Aycock said Williams explained to her at the January hearing that her law firm did not use open-ended AI but had acquired software that relies on AI and was used for in-house research.
She used that AI tool when writing two separate filings that contained four fake cases, according to Aycock, who said Williams acknowledged that the software included cases from several states, but not Mississippi.
In contrast to Wilson’s solo law practice, which did not have a policy governing the use of AI, Williams’ firm requires lawyers to verify research, according to Aycock.
“The court finds it particularly egregious that Williams, a partner and presumably a leader in her law firm, disregarded the AI policy by blindly relying on the AI research tool,” the judge wrote.
Ridgeway and McClinton also did not respond to requests for comment on June 9.
Both have law licences in Mississippi and sponsored the temporary admission of Wilson and Williams to participate in the case.
Aycock fined each of them US$1,000 and ruled that both lawyers had also violated the civil procedure rules by signing their names to the court filings.
Neither the Mississippi Bar nor the National Bar Association immediately responded to questions about the situation on June 9.
The breach of contract case had been scheduled to go to trial in March, but Aycock canceled the proceedings and issued a stay in the case. NYTIMES