A federal judge in Mississippi has punished all four lawyers on opposing sides in a civil trial and canceled the proceedings after some of them, relying on artificial intelligence, cited fake legal cases in court filings.<\/p>\n
Two of the lawyers have been barred for two years from appearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi for their conduct, while all four were removed from the case and fined.<\/p>\n
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, Miss., connected to a solar power development project.<\/p>\n
Mr. 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.<\/p>\n
In an order filed on Monday, Sharion Aycock, a senior U.S. District Court judge, wrote that the four lawyers had violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure<\/a> when they certified that the information in their filings was factual.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case presents the court with an unusual scenario \u2014 attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,\u201d Judge Aycock wrote.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In April, an elite Wall Street law firm apologized<\/a> to a federal judge for submitting a court filing replete with errors created by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n In the Mississippi case, the disciplinary actions were reported earlier by 404 Media<\/a> and Robert Freund<\/a>, a lawyer who tracks the misuse of A.I. in legal cases.<\/p>\n Both Ms. Wilson and Ms. 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, Judge Aycock noted.<\/p>\n Neither responded to a request for comment on Tuesday. Both were barred for two years by Judge Aycock, who fined Ms. Wilson $2,500 and Ms. Williams $3,500.<\/p>\n Each was granted temporary admission to participate in the case in Mississippi because they hold law licenses in other states (Louisiana and Texas).<\/p>\n Judge Aycock said Ms. Wilson told her that she had used First Drafts, an A.I.-powered program for drafting legal documents, while writing a motion that contained two citations to nonexistent cases, which are known as hallucinatory citations.<\/p>\n When confronted about those falsehoods, the judge said, Ms. Wilson claimed she was \u201cunaware that A.I. could produce hallucinated cases and explained that she did not even know what a hallucinated case was.\u201d<\/p>\n First Drafts did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Judge Aycock noted that Ms. Wilson was also disciplined in April by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Louisiana for similar actions.<\/p>\n \u201cHer continued A.I. misuse demonstrates an extreme dereliction of professional responsibility on her part,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n Judge Aycock said Ms. Williams explained to her at the January hearing that her law firm did not use open-ended A.I. but had acquired software that relies on A.I. and was used for in-house research.<\/p>\n She used that A.I. tool when writing two separate filings that contained four fake cases, according to Judge Aycock, who said Ms. Williams acknowledged that the software included cases from several states, but not Mississippi.<\/p>\n In contrast to Ms. Wilson\u2019s solo law practice, which did not have a policy governing the use of A.I., Ms. Williams\u2019s firm requires lawyers to verify research, according to Judge Aycock.<\/p>\n \u201cThe court finds it particularly egregious that Williams, a partner and presumably a leader in her law firm, disregarded the A.I. policy by blindly relying on the A.I. research tool,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n Ms. Ridgeway did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Mr. McClinton declined to comment.<\/p>\n Both have law licenses in Mississippi and sponsored the temporary admission of Ms. Wilson and Ms. Williams to participate in the case.<\/p>\n Judge Aycock fined each of them $1,000 and ruled that both lawyers had also violated the civil procedure rules by signing their names to the court filings.<\/p>\n Neither the Mississippi Bar nor the National Bar Association immediately responded to questions about the situation on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The breach of contract case had been scheduled to go to trial in March, but Judge Aycock canceled the proceedings and issued a stay in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Mississippi has punished all four lawyers on opposing sides in a civil trial and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,31784,1554,38210,38211,38215,38209,38217,38216,8059,52,38212,38213,24289,38214,16001],"class_list":["post-68359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-courts-and-the-judiciary","tag-decisions-and-verdicts","tag-fines-penalties","tag-kathleen-m","tag-kathryn-y","tag-legal-profession","tag-mark","tag-mcclinton","tag-mississippi","tag-research","tag-ridgeway","tag-shauncey-hunter","tag-suits-and-litigation-civil","tag-williams","tag-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}