This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records. Subscribe to them here.
After a group of attorneys were caught using AI to cite cases that didn’t actually exist in court documents last month, another lawyer was told to pay $15,000 for his own AI hallucinations that showed up in several briefs.
Attorney Rafael Ramirez, who represented a company called HoosierVac in an ongoing case where the Mid Central Operating Engineers Health and Welfare Fund claims the company is failing to allow the union a full audit of its books and records, filed a brief in October 2024 that cited a case the judge wasn’t able to locate. Ramirez ”acknowledge[d] that the referenced citation was in error,” withdrew the citation, and “apologized to the court and opposing counsel for the confusion,” according to Judge Mark Dinsmore, U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of Indiana. But that wasn’t the end of it. An “exhaustive review” of Ramirez’s other filings in the case showed that he’d included made-up cases in two other briefs, too.
Source: Judges Are Fed up With Lawyers Using AI That Hallucinate Court Cases
