A lawyer in New York is facing a court hearing after his firm used ChatGPT for a legal filing which cited many non-existent cases. According to a report by the New York Times on Saturday (May 27), Steven Schwartz, a lawyer with Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, faces a sanctions hearing on June 8. Schwartz, who has practised law in New York for 30 years, said that he greatly regretted relying on ChatGPT and would never do so in future without absolute verification of its authenticity.
What is the case about?
According to the New York Times report, a man named Roberto Mata sued the airline Avianca, saying he was injured when a serving cart struck his knee during a flight to the Kennedy International Airport in New York. As per the lawsuit, Mata was a passenger on Aviance Flight 670 from El Salvador to New York on August 27, 2019, when an airline employee bonked him with the metal serving cart.
When Avianca asked a Manhattan federal judge to toss out the case, Mata’s lawyers objected and submitted a 10-page brief in March that cited over half a dozen relevant court decisions. The brief cited Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines, Varghese v. China Southern Airlines and a few other cases.
But here’s the catch- Avianca’s lawyers wrote to Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York, saying they were unable to find the cases that were cited in the brief. When it came to the Varghese v. China Southern Airlines case, the airline’s lawyers said they were not able to locate this case by caption or citation.
“The undersigned has not been able to locate this quotation, nor anything like it in any case,” they added.
The lawyers further pointed out that the quotation, which came from Varghese itself, cited Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co. Ltd., an opinion purportedly handed down by the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 2008. They said they could not find that, either.
Following this, Judge Castel ordered Mata’s attorneys to provide copies of the opinions referred to in their brief.
The report said that Bart Banino, a lawyer for Avianca, said his firm, Condon & Forsyth specialised in aviation law and that its lawyers could tell the cases in the 10-page brief were not real. Banino said that they had an inkling a chatbot might have been involved.
ChatGPT behind the legal filing
ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot backed by Microsoft, was behind these fake court decisions. In a May 4 order, Judge Castel that at least six of the submitted cases by Steven Schwartz as research for the brief appeared to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.
Had no intent to deceive the court or airline: Lawyer
Schwartz told Judge Castel that he had no intent to deceive the court or Avianca, adding he never used ChatGPT and therefore was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.
On Thursday, Roberto Mata’s lawyers offered affidavits containing their version of what had happened. Schwartz said he originally filed the lawsuit in state court. But after Avianca had the lawsuit transferred to Manhattan’s federal court, where Schwartz is not allowed to practice, one of his colleagues LoDuca became the lawyer of record.
Schwartz said he continued with the legal research in which LoDuca had no role.
Schwartz said he consulted ChatGPT “to supplement” his work and that, “in consultation” with it, found and cited the nonexistent cases.
As per a copy of the exchange submitted to the judge, the lawyer asked, “Is Varghese a real case?” to which ChatGPT replied, “Yes.” “What is your source,” Schwartz asked, and ChatGPT responded, ” I apologise for the confusion earlier.”
Schwartz asked whether the other cases provided were fake, but the AI chatbot said they were real and could be found in reputable legal databases.
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