Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case

The lawyers on both sides of a federal court case in Mississippi were caught using artificial intelligence, a situation where, effectively, generative AI tools were used to argue against each other. The judge wrote in a blistering sanctions order, that the lawyers wasted the court’s time, and that “in an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubber-stamp.”

“This case presents the Court with an unusual scenario—attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,” Sharion Aycock, senior United States District Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi wrote in a sanctions order. “This court is yet again ‘burdened with addressing AI hallucinations court filings.’”

The case in question involved a contractual dispute between lawyer Tom Withers and the city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, over apparently unpaid legal fees (Withers was not representing himself and was not sanctioned by the court). The case was first noticed by Rob Freund, a lawyer who frequently posts about cases involving AI hallucinations. Freund called it a “comedy of AI errors,” and suggested “there were two clients who basically were paying for ChatGPT (or whatever LLM) to argue against itself.”

404 Media has repeatedly covered the phenomenon of lawyers using AI to prepare their filings, and the specifics in this court case follow a similar pattern to what we’ve seen before: Lawyers for both sides cited nonexistent, hallucinated cases while making their arguments. The difference is that every lawyer involved in the case is implicated, leading Aycock to pause the proceedings, cancel the trial, and disqualify all four lawyers involved. Two of the lawyers were barred from appearing before the court for two years; all lawyers received a fine of between $1,000 and $3,500, depending on Aycock’s assessment of their culpability for not verifying the outputs of the AI they used. 

Judges around the country have been increasingly frustrated with lawyers who use AI; last week, we wrote about a judge who ripped into various lawyers for citing hallucinated cases in New York.