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A federal judge in Alabama has fined and reprimanded a lawyer who used artificial intelligence to draft court filings that contained inaccurate case citations.
U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer penned an 18-page order that chastised the conduct of Loxley-based lawyer James Johnson, FOX10 Mobile reported.
“The Court further has no difficulty finding that Mr. Johnson’s misconduct was more than mere recklessness. … The insertion of bogus citations is not a mere typographical error, nor the subject of reasonable debate,” he wrote. “It is just wrong.”
Moorer fined Johnson $5,000 and ordered him to alert current and future clients about the error, according to the report.
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The judge also referred Johnson to the court’s advisory panel to consider removing him from the list of attorneys eligible for court-appointed criminal cases.
Moorer wrote that his reasoning for a reprimand beyond a monetary fine was because it “has become clear that basic reprimands and small fines are not sufficient” to deter this type of misconduct, citing dozens of lawyers making similar errors in cases across the country.
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“Yet, the improper use of generative AI is a problem that sadly is not going away despite the general knowledge in the legal community that AI can hallucinate and make up cases. … Somehow the message still has not been hammered home as the epidemic of citing fake cases continues unabated,” Moorer wrote.
Johnson was representing Glennie Antonio McGee in a high-profile drug case. McGee allegedly ran a drug distribution organization that used children as young as three years old as couriers.
McGee declared that he no longer had confidence in Johnson as his counsel following the AI misconduct. Moorer then gave McGee permission to represent himself.
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