US: Judge fines lawyers for using AI to prepare court documents

A federal judge has fined two lawyers representing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell for submitting court documents generated with artificial intelligence (AI) that contained multiple factual and legal errors.

Judge Nina Y. Wang of the U.S. District Court in Denver ruled on July 7, that attorneys Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster violated court rules when they filed a motion on February 25 containing nearly 30 faulty citations, including references to non-existent cases and misquoted legal sources.

The court order, obtained by USA TODAY, revealed that the motion was filed in response to an earlier submission from Eric Coomer, a former director at Dominion Voting Systems. 

Coomer had accused Lindell of defamation for promoting a conspiracy theory alleging he rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.

The case, which began in May 2022, concluded on June 16 when a federal jury found in favour of Coomer, awarding him over $2 million in damages—well below the $62.7 million he had sought.

During a pretrial conference, when questioned about the defective filing, Kachouroff told the court that he had delegated citation verification to his co-counsel, DeMaster. 

Judge Wang asked him directly if the motion had been “generated by generative artificial intelligence,” to which Kachouroff replied, “Not initially. Initially, I did an outline for myself, and I drafted a motion, and then we ran it through AI.”

Upon further questioning about whether he had verified the citations after running the document through AI, Kachouroff responded, “Your Honor, I personally did not check it. I am responsible for it not being checked.”

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In her ruling, Judge Wang stated, “Notwithstanding any suggestion to the contrary, this Court derives no joy from sanctioning attorneys who appear before it,” but noted that the $3,000 sanction imposed on each lawyer was “the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance.”

Kachouroff told the court that the flawed document was a draft mistakenly filed. However, Wang pointed out that the final version he claimed he had intended to submit also contained “substantive errors,” some of which were not present in the initial filing.

The judge concluded that the “contradictory statements and the lack of corroborating evidence” made by both attorneys indicated the AI-generated filing was not “an advertent error” and warranted disciplinary action.

“Neither Mr. Kachouroff nor Ms. DeMaster provided the Court any explanation as to how those citations appeared in any draft of the Opposition absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness by counsel,” Wang wrote.

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