So, the lawyers who took much of their briefing from ChatGPT have been sanctioned. ChatGPT created case law out of whole cloth. It created non-existent holdings from those cases that simply did not exist. I previously wrote about that brief here. This is not a surprising result. Whatever the source, every lawyer has a duty to verify the law s/he presents to the court. The judge sanctioned the lawyers $5,000 and instructed them to tell their client that they had been sanctioned. The judge also ordered the lawyers, Steve Schwartz and Peter LoDuca to notify each of the judges to whom they had attributed false caselaw that they had been sanctioned.

The judge noted that the lawyers made it worse by withholding the truth when the opposing counsel first questioned them about the false caselaw. It is ironic that Mr. LoDuca simply signed the brief. He he did not help prepare it. But, as lawyers, we need to be careful with whom we associate on cases. Certainly, any lawyer who signs a brief holds some responsibility for that brief.

See blog report here for more information.