AI "Hallucinated Cases" Lead to $47K Sanctions
A short excerpt from the long opinion in Judge Anna Manasco (N.D. Ala.) in last week's Rivera v. Triad Properties Corp.:
This case is before the court for ongoing disciplinary proceedings against Attorney Joshua Watkins and his former law firm, Burrill Watkins LLC, following Mr. Watkins's misuse of artificial intelligence to make false statements to the court….
On multiple occasions, in multiple filings and hearings, and in response to multiple questions and orders, Mr. Watkins has intentionally misled the court. Rather than taking responsibility for his actions, Mr. Watkins has feigned contrition, obfuscated the truth, changed his stories when it suits him, and attempted to blame others for his own professional misconduct….
Mr. Watkins's misconduct includes—and extends well beyond—the misuse of artificial intelligence to make both misleading and outright fabricated statements of law. Between the protracted misconduct in this case, and the similar AI issue in a sister court, the court is gravely concerned about the consequences of Mr. Watkins's misconduct.
Mr. Watkins's misconduct did not occur in a vacuum. The court also has serious concerns about Burrill Watkins's apparent lack of internal controls and guardrails surrounding its attorneys' use of artificial intelligence—indeed, the very AI the firm pays for and encourages its attorneys to use. Though Burrill Watkins maintains that it acted swiftly to remediate Mr. Watkins's errors, which it says it had no reason to know about, the firm has not explained how it enforced any policies about responsible AI use, how it will prevent improper AI use going forward, or any other circumstance—let alone an extraordinary one—why it shouldn't be sanctioned.
Indeed, although Burrill Watkins's purported lack of knowledge has to do with a partner's misuse of a relatively new technology, its core argument about its own ignorance is both old and ordinary. The court need not make findings about the employment disputes between Mr. Burrill and Mr. Watkins to evaluate whether the firm should be sanctioned under Rule 11 for Mr. Watkins's misconduct in this case….
The court finds that Mr. Watkins's factual statements about keeping the plaintiffs fully informed of his misconduct and its attendant risk to their case were false. The court credits Dulce Rivera's statements that Mr. Watkins did not advise her about the issues his AI misuse caused for her family's business litigation. Those statements fit with all the other evidence in the record, including the timing of her own decision to ask that Burrill Watkins not allow Mr. Watkins to handle her family's case any longer.
On the other hand, the court finds that Mr. Watkins's entirely unsupported—and directly contradicted—self-serving narrative on this issue is unworthy of belief. Mr. Watkins's last-minute assertion that he promptly told his clients all they needed to know to understand the seriousness of his misconduct does not fit with any other evidence in the record, including the timing of his dismissal from this case or his removal from his law firm. Indeed, the evidentiary record provides no support for this assertion by Mr. Watkins….
Mr. Watkins's conduct in this case is troubling. What began as the misuse of artificial intelligence in a court filing (which Mr. Watkins characterized as an inadvertent technical error) grew into repeated instances of lying and obfuscation. At a minimum, this violated Rule 11.
But Mr. Watkins's misconduct extends well beyond the rule violation. As an initial matter, his repeated efforts to deflect blame reflect little to no appreciation for the seriousness of the rule violation. At best, Mr. Watkins feigned accepting responsibility for the hallucinated cases; he laced his purported acceptance with blame for court staff and distracted from it by foisting blame on opposing counsel.
Further, in the filings that supposedly corrected the fabricated citations, Mr. Watkins again misled the court, ignored some specific instances of misconduct, and tried to bury the true extent of others through convoluted footnotes. And Mr. Watkins intentionally misrepresented his communications with his clients, describing himself as forthcoming, honest, and diligent with them, when the record reflects the opposite. Mr. Watkins changed his answers to the court's questions and misrepresented basic facts.
Altogether, this course of misconduct reflects an abdication of Mr. Watkins's duty of candor to the court. His false statements of law and fact reflect intentional, repeated choices—not isolated lapses in judgment attendant to unreasonable haste or excusable neglect. The court's finding in this regard is underscored by the reality that the same kind of conduct by Mr. Watkins contemporaneously garnered the attention—and serious concern—of a state court. And the finding is amplified by his failure to follow the court's instructions in its order to show cause, deepening the court's concern about his respect for court rules and orders, the seriousness of these proceedings, and Mr. Watkins's attention to these disciplinary proceedings.
In at least one other case involving false statements of law arising from the misuse of artificial intelligence, the court has seen lawyers accept responsibility for a lapse in judgment and do the work necessary to establish that it was, in fact, a lapse. This is not that.
The court is sympathetic to Mr. Watkins's stressful circumstances that allegedly caused him to file a draft, unvetted document, but that neither encapsulates nor excuses Mr. Watkins's full complement of misconduct. The court cannot attribute the sequence of events that comprise Mr. Watkins's misconduct in this case—which occurred over a period of months and took the court dozens of pages to recite—to ordinary negligence, or even recklessness, under difficult and stressful working conditions.
Mr. Watkins's intentional misrepresentations and disruptions in this litigation are, at a minimum, knowing. His false statements and effortful misleading, together with his steadfast refusal to accept responsibility, are, at a minimum, tantamount to bad faith. Accordingly, the court will impose appropriate sanctions under Rule 11 and its inherent authority….
The court ORDERS as follows:
1. The court PUBLICLY REPRIMANDS attorney Joshua B. Watkins and law firm Burrill Watkins LLC for the misconduct described in this order;
2. To effectuate their reprimand, Mr. Watkins and Burrill Watkins are ORDERED to provide a copy of this order to their clients, opposing counsel, and presiding judge in every pending state or federal case in which they are counsel of record. They shall also provide a copy of this order to every attorney in their law firm….;
3. To further effectuate the reprimands and deter similar misconduct by others, the Clerk of Court is DIRECTED to submit this order for publication in the Federal Supplement;
4. Mr. Watkins and Burrill Watkins LLC are DISQUALIFIED from further participation in this case; …
6. The Clerk of Court is DIRECTED to serve a copy of this order on the General Counsel of the Alabama State Bar and any other applicable licensing authorities for further proceedings as appropriate; …
12…. [T]he court GRANTS the defendants' requests for attorney's fees. The court ORDERS Burrill Watkins to pay the Triad Defendants $11,453. The court further ORDERS Mr. Watkins and Burrill Watkins to pay, jointly and severally, $35,603.90 to the Fite Defendants….