Lawyer faces $15,000 fine for using fake AI-generated cases in court filing

Facepalm: Another instance of an attorney using generative AI to file briefs containing non-existent cases has led to a judge recommending a $15,000 fine for his actions. That's more than three times what two lawyers and their law firm were fined in 2023 for doing the same thing. When representing HooserVac LLC in a lawsuit over its retirement fund in October 2024, Indiana attorney Rafael Ramirez included case citations in three separate briefs. The court could not locate these cases as they had been fabricated by ChatGPT. In December, US Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of Indiana Mark J. Dinsmore ordered Ramirez to appear in court and show cause as to why he shouldn't be sanctioned for the errors. "Transposing numbers in a citation, getting the date wrong, or misspelling a party's name is an error," the judge wrote. "Citing to a case that simply does not exist is something else altogether. Mr Ramirez offers no hint of an explanation for how a case citation made up out of ... Read full article.