In another “hard lesson learned” case, on Monday, February 24, 2025, a federal district court sanctioned three lawyers from the national law firm Morgan & Morgan for citing artificial intelligence (AI)-generated fake cases in motions in limine. Of the nine cases cited in the motions, eight were non-existent.
Although two of the lawyers were not involved in drafting the motions, all three e-signed the motions before they were filed. The lawyer who drafted the motions admitted, after the defense counsel raised issues to the court concerning the cited cases, that they used MX2.law to add case law to the motions. MX2.law is “an in-house database launched by” Morgan & Morgan. The lawyer admitted to the court that it was their first time using AI in this way. Unfortunately, they failed to verify the accuracy of the AI platform’s output before filing the motions.
To Morgan & Morgan’s credit, they withdrew the motions, were forthcoming to the court, reimbursed the defendant for attorney’s fees, and implemented “policies, safeguards, and training to prevent another [such]occurrence in the future.”
The court sanctioned all three lawyers. The attorney who drafted the motions and failed to verify the output was sanctioned $3,000 and the other two who e-filed the motions were sanctioned $1,000 each. A hard lesson learned, although by now all attorneys should be aware of the risks of using generative AI tools for assistance with writing pleadings. This is not the first hard lesson learned by an attorney who cited fake cases in a court filing. Check the output of any AI-generated material, whether it is in a court filing or not. In the words of the sanctioning court: “As attorneys transition to the world of AI, the duty to check their sources and make a reasonable inquiry into existing law remains unchanged.”