Rule 11 and AI (Sami Sumer)

The linked Bloomberg Law article brings attention to yet another attorney caught citing to a non-existent case for a legal brief. ChatGPT suggested the fake case to the plaintiff's attorney. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit referred the attorney to the court's grievance panel, holding that "[t]he brief presents a false statement of law to this Court, and it appears that Attorney Lee made no inquiry, much less the reasonable inquiry required by Rule 11 and long-standing precedent, into the validity of the arguments she presented." Park v. Kim, No. 22-2057, 2024 WL 332478, at *1, *4 (2d Cir. Jan. 30, 2024).

To satisfy the reasonable inquiry required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b), the attorney could have easily looked up the case herself, which was only one of two cited in the delayed reply brief. Park, 2024 WL 332478, at *3. In doing so, she would quickly realize the case was fake and would also dodge the Rule 11(b)(2) violation by simply not using it. It is comically tragic that the court was able to quote from a district decision issued within its own circuit last year because that opinion also dealt with attorneys presenting cases that did not exist. See Mata v. Avianca, Inc., No. 22CV01461(PKC), 2023 WL 4114965, at *1, *12 (S.D.N.Y. June 22,2023). It appears a new body of procedural law is being created to clean up the mess left by overreliance on underdeveloped tools.

The linked article includes a downloadable PDF of the appellate decision.