AIFoPa-2024-0003
Date of Record: 01 Nov 2024
2 min read
Opposing Counsel Could Not Find Them
Two lawyers suing an airline filed a brief that cited six court decisions. The airline’s lawyers went looking for them. ChatGPT had written all six.
Roberto Mata sued the airline Avianca in February 2022. He said a metal serving cart had struck his knee during a flight. His lawyers were Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca.
In 2023 they filed a brief that cited Varghese v. China Southern Airlines and five other decisions. Avianca’s lawyers could not find them. Neither could the judge.
Schwartz had found the cases with ChatGPT. He had then asked ChatGPT whether they were real. It said they “indeed exist” and could be found on Westlaw and LexisNexis, the legal research databases.
Judge P. Kevin Castel ordered the lawyers to explain. He described the legal analysis in one of the invented decisions as “gibberish.” On 22 June 2023 he fined the lawyers and their firm $5,000.
Mata v. Avianca was the first case of its kind to draw wide attention. Courts then began to require lawyers to disclose AI use. In July 2024 the American Bar Association issued its first ethics guidance on the subject.
None of that prevented the cases that followed. Guidance is not verification. A disclosure requirement is not verification. A working vocabulary is not verification. Verification is verification.
The six cases did not exist. No quantity of subsequent documentation alters this.