CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Legal Newsline) - A personal injury lawyer who fell victim to the shortcomings of artificial intelligence will be kicked off a case as it heads to trial.
Wyoming federal judge Kelly Rankin on Feb. 24 handed down her punishment for being given a motion that used made-up cases to bolster its argument. Rudwin Ayala, a lawyer in one of Morgan & Morgan's Florida offices, will not get to see his lawsuit against Walmart through.
Ayala was hit with a $3,000 penalty plus the revocation of his temporary admission to practice in Wyoming. Two other lawyers on the case, scheduled for a March 3 trial start, are to each pay $1,000.
"While technology continues to evolve, one thing remains the same - checking and verifying the source," Judge Rankin wrote.
The head of Morgan & Morgan's product safety department, Mike Morgan, said the matter came with "great embarrassment" and led to an inspection of how an AI program the firm started to use in November should be used.
In a routine Jan. 22 motion, Morgan & Morgan, as it pursues property damage and injuries claims against Walmart and Jetson Electrics over a hoverboard battery that allegedly caught fire, cited nine cases to back its arguments.
"The problem with these cases is that none exist, except United States v. Caraway," Judge Rankin wrote Feb. 6.
"The cases are not identifiable by their Westlaw cite, and the Court cannot locate the District of Wyoming cases by their case name in its local Electronic Court Filing System."
Rankin cited three other cases in which courts have asked lawyers to explain why AI has led to these errors. A federal appeals courts a year ago punished a lawyer who used ChatGPT and had the same problem, dismissing her client's case and subjecting her to a possible $8,000 penalty.
Another New York lawyer was ordered to pay $5,000 for citing a nonexistent case in 2023.
Before the digital age, attorneys had to cross-reference case citations in books to make sure those cases were still applicable. Rankin wrote that process has been simplified through database signals.
"Yet one still cannot run a natural language or 'Boolean' search through a database and immediately cite the highlighted excerpt that appears under a case," she wrote.
"The researcher must still read the case to ensure the excerpt is existing law to support their propositions and arguments. After all, the excerpt could very well be a losing party's argument, the court explaining an overruled case, dicta, etc.
"As attorneys transition to the world of AI, the duty to check their sources and make a reasonable inquiry into existing law remains unchanged."
Ayala prepared the motion. He said he received little to no involvement from his co-counsel when doing so.
He used the AI tool for finding additional case support and uploaded his motion to it, with instructions to add information.
"This was the first time in my career that I ever used AI for queries of this nature," he wrote Feb. 13.
"My reliance on the query results was misplaced, and I failed to verify that the case citations resulted were in fact accurate as I expected them to be. As a result, I have come to learn the term 'AI hallucinations' and take full and sole responsibility for the resulting misinformation to this Court, as unintentional as it was."
Local counsel Taly Goody of Goody Law Group says she never saw the motion before it was submitted to the court. She had referred the case to Morgan & Morgan because her husband has an interest in trying a case with its lead trial attorney.
She is the other lawyer hit with a $1,000 penalty.
The same day in the same case, Magistrate Judge Scott Klosterman decided to let Walmart's experts testify the Wadsworth family's fire wasn't caused by a defective hoverboard battery.
Three experts will testify at an upcoming trial, if there is no settlement, that a cigarette butt near a "smoking shed" was the culprit. Klosterman is also striking the testimony of the plaintiffs' expert who wanted to speak to the cost of future health care.
Dr. Ronald Snyder is a physiatrist who prepared a life care plan for Stephanie Wadsworth, but he won't be allowed to tell jurors what those costs will be. He said a lifetime total would be near $3.7 million.