The case in question involved a contractual dispute between lawyer Tom Withers and the city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, over apparently unpaid legal fees (Withers was not representing himself and was not sanctioned by the court). The case was first noticed by Rob Freund, a lawyer who frequently posts about cases involving AI hallucinations. Freund called it a “comedy of AI errors,” and suggested “there were two clients who basically were paying for ChatGPT (or whatever LLM) to argue against itself.”
404 Media has repeatedly covered the phenomenon of lawyers using AI to prepare their filings, and the specifics in this court case follow a similar pattern to what we’ve seen before: Lawyers for both sides cited nonexistent, hallucinated cases while making their arguments. The difference is that every lawyer involved in the case is implicated, leading Aycock to pause the proceedings, cancel the trial, and disqualify all four lawyers involved. Two of the lawyers were barred from appearing before the court for two years; all lawyers received a fine of between $1,000 and $3,500, depending on Aycock’s assessment of their culpability for not verifying the outputs of the AI they used.