The case was a dispute between attorney Tom Withers and the city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, in which Withers alleged that he had not been paid legal fees. Withers was not representing herself, but perhaps in retrospect the wishes were hers, as her representation had decided to use AI to do research for the case and actually generate the filings presented to the judge. According to a court document, two lawyers representing Withers admitted that he did not verify any information produced by the AI before filing his statement.
This isn’t great, but it gets worse, because the lawyers are representing the city of Aberdeen Too Used AI, which meant professional lawyers were basically wasting everyone’s time by making LLMs argue against each other.
As you can imagine, the judge in the case wasn’t exactly thrilled with the whole situation. Senior United States District Judge Sherrien Aycock of the Northern District of Mississippi took the dramatic step of halting proceedings entirely and temporarily suspending the trial, dismissing all four attorneys involved in the case. Two of those lawyers – one from each side, both of whom admitted to using AI tools to prepare their filings – have been barred from appearing before the court for two years. It also fined all of the lawyers involved, ranging from $1,000 to $3,500, depending on whether they failed to verify information in a filing or whether they actually drafted documents with AI-hallucinated quotes.
“This case presents the Court with an unusual scenario – attorneys for both plaintiffs engaged in similar acceptable conduct,” Aycock wrote in the sanctions order. “This Court is once again burdened with addressing ‘AI hallucination court filings.'”
The AI problem has hit courts across the country badly, much to the dismay of judges, who are tasked with scrutinizing lawyers’ work to ensure that some completely hallucinatory quote doesn’t accidentally get added to actual legal precedent. Legal researcher Damien Charlotin has taken it upon himself to track down every instance of AI-generated citations in legal filings and has documented a staggering 1598 cases so far. If you are a lawyer, please help Charlotten by not using AI in your work. This is the least you can do.
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