• Incident details: A plaintiff's law firms were sanctioned for submitting fake AI citations. Retired US magistrate judge Michael Wilner initially thought the citations were real and almost included them in a court order. This isn't the first time such an incident has occurred. Opposing attorneys sometimes notice and notify the judge. In this case, the judge noticed un-verifiable citations and was troubled by how close he came to including them.
• Represented parties: The sanctioned lawyers are representing former Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who sued State Farm. Lacey's lawsuit alleges State Farm refused to provide legal defense to her late husband who pointed a gun at activists.
• Law firm details: Lacey is represented by a "large team of attorneys" at K&L Gates and Ellis George LLP. In the incident, an attorney at Ellis George used AI tools to generate an "outline" for the supplemental brief, which was incorporated into the brief without proper review. K&L Gates re-submitted the brief with some errors removed but still had AI-generated problems.
• Judge's view: The judge criticized the use of AI and the lack of proper review. He wrote that no reasonably competent attorney should outsource research to AI without verification. The lawyers' actions demonstrated reckless conduct. The sanctions affected the plaintiff's case, and the judge ordered Ellis George and K&L Gates to pay $26,100 and $5,000 respectively, and chose to impose penalties on the firms instead of individual lawyers.