#NewYork lawyers sanctioned for using fake #ChatGPT cases in legal brief
#NEWYORK (MNP) – A U.S. judge on Thursday imposed #sanctions on two #NewYork #lawyers who submitted a legal brief that included six fictitious case citations #generated by an artificial #intelligence chatbot, #ChatGPT.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan ordered lawyers Steven Schwartz, Peter LoDuca and their law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to pay a $5,000 fine in total.
The judge found the lawyers acted in bad faith and made “acts of conscious avoidance and false and misleading statements to the court.”
Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that its lawyers “respectfully” disagreed with the court that they acted in bad faith.
“We made a good faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth,” the firm’s statement said.
Lawyers for Schwartz said he declined to comment. LoDuca did not immediately reply to a request for comment, and his lawyer said they are reviewing the decision.
Schwartz admitted in May that he had used ChatGPT to help research the brief in a client’s personal injury case against Colombian airline Avianca (AVT_p.CN) and unknowingly included the false citations. LoDuca’s name was the only one on the brief that Schwartz prepared.
