Judge Kevin Castel on Thursday issued an opinion and order on sanctions that found Peter LoDuca, Steven A. Schwartz, and the law firm of Levidow, Levidow & Oberman P.C. had “abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.”
To punish the attorneys, the judge directed each to pay a $5,000 fine to the court, to notify their client, and to notify each real judge falsely identified as the author of the cited fake cases.
I’m issuing an opinion that they’re getting off cheap. But their careers have suffered irreparable harm, so it’s alright. 🙂
Hopefully the get disbarred as well.
They should have just plain been disbarred. They were, de facto, lying in court.
They still can be. The state bar has to decide on that.
Exactly this. I imagine the New York bar was waiting for this opinion to get started. Also, I get that Rule 11 sanctions are rare but $5000 seems low given the equities at stake.
Legal Eagle did a cool video on this, for anyone interested:
Should be $5k per individual falsification.
Hm… I think if they fucked up and were negligent, this is a reasonable slap on the wrist judgement. If they fucked up, and then were knowledgeable in a malicious cover-up of their fuck up, this seems like a light punishment. The evidence seems to weigh towards the second, but the punishment gives them the benefit of the doubt on that.
