Kansas judge fines attorneys over AI-generated court brief

Story provided by USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

A Kansas federal judge recently imposed penalties that included fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 upon attorneys responsible for mistakenly submitting a brief containing falsehoods created by artificial intelligence.

Senior U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in a Feb. 2 ruling spelled out penalties assessed to Texas-based attorneys Sandeep Seth, Kenneth Kula, Christopher Joe and Michael Doell and Kansas-based attorney David Cooper.

The five, as attorneys of record for Lexos Media IP LLC, signed a defective brief submitted in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, as part of a patent infringement case against Overstock.com Inc.

The brief contained numerous falsehoods blamed on AI, including citing a nonexistent lawsuit against Topeka’s city government, sharing made-up quotes attributed to judges’ decisions and sharing citations to cases that are real but held the opposite of what the brief claimed they did.

Here’s what penalties were assessed

Robinson assessed the following penalties:

• A $5,000 fine upon Seth, of Houston-based SethLaw PLLC, who admitted he added the AI-generated citations to the brief and should have checked their accuracy. Robinson also revoked Seth’s admission as an attorney in the case, ordered him to self-report to legal disciplinary authorities in the state where he is licensed and ordered him to submit to the court clerk a certificate outlining internal procedures his firm is undertaking to ensure future court filings are accurate.
• A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Kula, of Dallas-based Buether Joe & Counselors LLC., whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he had failed to review and also failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules.
• A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Joe, the case’s lead attorney, whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he’d failed to review and failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules. Because Joe is the managing member of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, Robinson also ordered him to implement procedures there to ensure future court filings are accurate; strongly consider verification and training requirements for all members; and file a certificate outlining those procedures by Feb. 28.
• A $1,000 fine upon Cooper, the local counsel for the case, whom Robinson said signed documents for which he didn’t check citations. Robinson stressed that Cooper acknowledged he had a responsibility to fact-check those documents, expressed remorse for not doing so and shared detailed information about steps being taken to avoid future infractions of the same type by the Topeka firm for which he is employed, Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith LLP.
• Admonishment upon Doell, of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, where he is the most junior attorney in the case. Doell wasn’t fined. Robinson said Doell was placed in a difficult position by his supervising attorneys, who neither expected nor instructed him to substantively check Seth’s work.

Here’s how the mistake was made

Seth said that after writing an initial draft brief in the case, he used ChatGPT as a shortcut to find 10th Circuit and Federal Circuit case law consistent with the facts of the case.

Seth said he incorporated some of the citations and quotes ChatGPT provided into his brief but didn’t check them.

“I should not have incorporated these without checking them first,” he said.

All five attorneys on Lexos Media’s legal team who signed the brief shared the blame for the AI-hallucinated material, Robinson said last month.

She ordered the five to show cause in writing as to why they shouldn’t be penalized. The attorneys responded by each filing declarations Jan. 5.