"Federal Judge's Order" "Lists Incorrect Parties," Includes "Wrong Quotes" and Nonexistent Cases

From Mississippi Today (Taylor Vance & Devna Bose) on Monday:

A ruling from a federal judge in Mississippi contained factual errors — listing plaintiffs who weren't parties to the suit, including incorrect quotes from a state law and referring to cases that don't appear to exist — raising questions about whether artificial intelligence was involved in drafting the order.

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate issued an error-laden temporary restraining order on July 20, pausing the enforcement of a state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities.

Lawyers from the Mississippi Attorney General's Office asked him to clarify the order on Tuesday, and attorneys for the plaintiffs did not oppose the state's request. On Wednesday, Wingate replaced the order with a corrected version.

His original order no longer appears on the court docket, so the public no longer has access to it. The corrected order is backdated to July 20, even though it was filed three days later.

The article also notes that the replacement order still cites "Cousins v. School Bd. of City of Norfolk, 503 F.2d 422, 426–27 (4th Cir. 1974)," though no case with that name or at that citation appear to exist. As the article notes, it's not certain that these errors stemmed from the use of AI (the judge's chambers apparently didn't respond to the newspaper's query about this), but this seems like a plausible speculation given the facts that the newspaper reports.

You can also read the defendants' Motion to Correct Docket, Preserve Record, and for Clarification which seeks to place the original TRO back in the record (and which indeed attaches the original TRO).

Thanks to Damien Charlotin (AI Hallucination Cases Database) for the pointer.