21-05-2025
Federal judge mulls sanctions for attorneys who used AI in court filing
The front of Hugo L Black Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama on August 15, 2023. A U.S. District Judge is considering sanctions against attorneys representing the state for using artificial intelligence to draft a legal filing that either misstated legal authorities or cited cases that do not exist. (Jemma Stephenson/Alabama Reflector)
BIRMINGHAM — A federal judge said Wednesday she would consider sanctions on attorneys who filed a motion that used artificial intelligence and cited legal authorities that do not exist.
U.S. District Court Judge Anna M. Manasco told attorneys representing the state in the lawsuit — claiming corrections officers failed to protect an inmate — that lawyers continue to use artificial intelligence even after other courts have imposed corrective measures throughout the country.
'Generally, this has occurred in other cases where the courts have imposed sanctions and standing orders,' Manasco said during the hearing. 'This incident is proof-positive that those sanctions were insufficient. That causes me to consider a fuller range of sanctions.'
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Attorneys Matthew Reeves, the attorney who used AI; Bill Lunsford, the attorney overseeing the case, and litigants from Montgomery-based Butler Snow, the firm where Reeves and Lunsford are employed, expressed remorse and publicly apologized to both the plaintiffs and the court regarding the incident.
'I had limited use of artificial intelligence products such as Westlaw Precision with CoCounsel and ChatGTP,' Reeves said to Manasco during the hearing Wednesday. 'I first used it related to dietary matters. That is how I started to use it.'
Reeves then said he began querying artificial intelligence to research colleges for his son before applying the technology professionally for research into policies and practices related to different issues. It then culminated in using it to obtain citations for the case.
He said he was aware that using artificial intelligence to obtain citations did not comply with the firm's policies and that he did not verify the citations during the two instances that he relied on AI for the citations.
Reeves, who according to his LinkedIn profile has been a partner with Butler Snow since April 2023, said Manasco is within her discretion to impose sanctions.
'My only request, since I am the only one responsible, is not to punish my colleagues,' he said.
The incident involves five citations that Manasco characterized as 'hallucinated' across two documents filed with the court. The court was made aware of the fabricated citations after the attorneys for Frankie Johnson, the plaintiff in the case, filed a document to oppose the state's request to have their client available to give testimony on a certain date.
'As discussed below, Defendant has cited no legitimate authority to support his proposition that ordering a deposition before an anticipated document production is appropriate,' the filing said. 'Instead, Defendant appears to have wholly invented case citations in his Motion for Leave, possibly through the use of generative artificial intelligence.'
Lunsford and Butler Snow have been awarded millions of dollars to represent the Alabama Department of Corrections in cases alleging abuse within Alabama's prison facilities.
In December 2024, the Contract Review Committee approved contracts totaling $4.8 million to Lunsford and Butler Snow. The committee had previously approved $14.9 million in July 2023 and another $7.68 million in June of that same year.
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Manasco listed several possible consequences, from continuing education seminars and fines to referrals to the Alabama State Bar or even temporary suspensions.
Johnson, currently incarcerated at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, said in the lawsuit that he was attacked by as many as 13 people and stabbed at least nine times in the prison in December 2019. Johnson said that despite the attack, staff at the prison failed to properly protect him afterward.
'As a consequence of their individual and collective failure, on or about March 5, 2020, while restrained in shackles and handcuffs during a therapy session, Mr. Johnson was stabbed repeatedly by another prisoner at Donaldson,' the lawsuit states.
The attorneys for ADOC filed a motion to compel Johnson to testify the week of June 3. Johnson's attorneys said that they would not have enough time to prepare their client to give testimony.
In response, Reeves and Lunsford filed another document stating that other courts have required people who are incarcerated to give their testimony during a deposition when they are given the appropriate notice, which they argue was done in this case.
'Defendant bolstered this assertion with a lengthy string citation of legal authority and parentheticals that appeared to support Defendant's proposition,' Johnson's attorneys said. 'But the entire string citation appears to have been made up out of whole cloth.'
Johnson's attorneys noted four of the citations in the ADOC filing. One included an appropriate case but was not relevant to the issue that Reeves and Lunsford claimed in the document they filed.
A second case, Kelley v. City of Birmingham, was said to be decided in the U.S. Northern District of Alabama in 2021, when it was actually a Alabama state case from 1939. Two other citations referred to cases that did not exist.
Attorneys for Johnson began to review other documents that Lunsford and Reeves filed with the court in the case.
They then found another citation that was fabricated in a different document in which 'Plaintiff's counsel found a string of similarly named opinions, none of them stood for the proposition Defendant represented, and Plaintiff's counsel could not identify any case using the citation Defendant provided,' Johnson's attorneys said in their filing.
The plaintiffs in the case agreed to allow Reeves to refile the document to have Johnson testify by the original date that he and Lunsford requested, but this time with the appropriate citations.
Manasco will allow the leadership at the Butler Snow law firm another 10 days to review its policies and practices pertaining to the use of artificial intelligence before considering the matter further.
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