Lawyers on Both Sides Cited Fake AI Cases, So a Judge Killed the Trial and Banned Four of Them
In Withers v. City of Aberdeen, every lawyer on both sides filed briefs citing AI-hallucinated cases, so Judge Sharion Aycock cancelled the trial, disqualified all four attorneys, fined them $1,000 to $3,500, and barred two for two years.
"attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct"
404 Media, Joseph Cox
A Mississippi fee dispute produced something rare even in the age of robot lawyering: attorneys on both sides of Withers v. City of Aberdeen independently fed the court briefs stuffed with cases that do not exist, effectively letting two chatbots argue against each other. Senior District Judge Sharion Aycock paused the proceedings, disqualified all four lawyers, fined them between $1,000 and $3,500, and barred two from her district for two years. One attorney’s defense was that she did not know what a hallucinated case even was, an explanation the judge called insufficient and incredulous. The legal field keeps treating itself as a rubber stamp for whatever the machine spits out, and the clients are the ones left without counsel. 404 Media on the cancelled trial
Source: 404 Media, Joseph Cox · Joseph Cox
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