Ethics
Sanctions ramping up in cases involving AI hallucinations
The use of monetary sanctions against attorneys is seemingly on the rise as courts continue to address artificial intelligence-generated hallucinations in case documents. (Image from Shutterstock)
The use of monetary sanctions against attorneys is seemingly on the rise as courts continue to address artificial intelligence-generated hallucinations in case documents.
“I’m seeing some real frustration,” Judge John Browning, a retired Texas Fifth Court of Appeals judge and a professor at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, told Law.com. “Courts are really starting to take these, I think, more seriously because of the frustration that these kinds of cases are increasing around the country.”
As one recent example, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans issued a $2,500 sanction against an attorney who admitted to using vLex and Thomson Reuters’ CoCounsel to draft her arguments, Law.com reports. The court acknowledged imposing a steeper fine because the attorney didn’t accept responsibility.
In another case, Senior Judge Walter H. Rice of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio imposed a collective sanction of $7,500 against two attorneys for AI hallucinations, Law.com reports. He also found them in contempt and referred them to the Ohio Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel for “the most egregious violations of Rule 11” that he’d seen on the bench.
And in a third recent case, the 6th Circuit at Cincinnati imposed a total sanction of $30,000 against two attorneys for more than two dozen fake case citations, Law.com reports. It also dismissed the case because of “the pervasive misconduct” that rendered it “almost entirely frivolous.”
“I do think that, by and large, at least many courts have indeed taken pretty substantial steps to punish people,” Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, told Law.com.
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