Opinion fining lawyer $10,000 for citing hallucinated cases breaks down how errors occurred
Footage of William L. Ghiorso at an Oregon Court of Appeals hearing. The court fined him $10,000 for citing hallucinated cases. (Image from YouTube)
After determining that an appellate brief cited 15 hallucinated cases, the Oregon Court of Appeals fined a Salem lawyer $10,000.
The March 18 opinion follows a schedule the appellate court created, which fines $500 to $1,000 for each hallucinated citation, Oregon Live reports.
The fine could have been $16,500, but Judge Scott A. Shorr, presiding judge of court, noted that the lawyer, William L. Ghiorso, was having “serious health issues. that had been present for some time.” According to the opinion, he had already filed numerous motions for deadline extensions to file the brief.
Ghiorso did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal request for comment. According to the brief, he told the court that his office had a policy against using artificial intelligence to draft legal documents, or conduct research. For the brief submitted to the court, AI was used to create an outline of the arguments, but the actual drafting was done by counsel and his staff, Ghiorso told the court, according to the opinion. It includes a summary of how the errors occurred.
After creating the outline, his staff did not find many supporting cases on Westlaw and Lexis, so they then tried on search engines, such as Google and Safari, the opinion states. That led to “what appeared to be legitimate legal analysis,” with a link discussing an Oregon case.
“Counsel’s staff believed that those citations were real cases from legitimate sources and copied the case citations and some of the language directly into the brief,” the opinion says. It notes that counsel and his staff did not verify any of those citations in Westlaw or Lexis before filing the brief.
According to the opinion, Ghiorso apologized to the court, and said his office had taken steps to make sure this does not happen again.
Footage of the hearing can be seen here.
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