A federal judge has reprimanded and fined four lawyers in a Mississippi dispute over solar project fees after they submitted filings with AI-generated citations to nonexistent cases.
US District Judge Sharion Aycock imposed sanctions in the Withers v. City of Aberdeen case. She determined that two lawyers on each side violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by failing to verify AI output before filing.
At a show-cause hearing the attorneys apologized to the court. Aycock wrote that their blind reliance on technology produced hallucinatory citations and that all four lawyers are licensed and presumed well trained.
The case drew attention after marketing lawyer Rob Freund posted about it on X. The judge also shut down the underlying fee dispute as part of the sanctions.
New York recently adopted rules stating that generative AI results are not protected by attorney-client privilege as of June 1. The American Bar Association has issued ethical guidance urging lawyers to understand the risks of such tools.
