Walmart product liability lawsuit cites fake legal cases

Documents filed during a lawsuit over a house fire allegedly caused by a hoverboard were found to contain false, AI-generated legal citations, raising concerns about the use of AI in legal proceedings. What happened In a lawsuit filed in June 2023, attorneys representing Walmart and Jetson Electric Bikes from law firms Morgan & Morgan and Goody Law Group submitted a motion in January 2025 citing eight non-existent legal cases. Rudwin Ayala, T. Michael Morgan, and Taly Goody represented plaintiffs suing Walmart, arguing that a fire had destroyed their clients' house and caused serious burns to family members. T he defendants were unable to identify the cases cited, though o ne of them appeared to have been a case fabricated by MX2.law, an in-house database launched by Mr. Ayala and Mr. Morgan’s company. A federal judge discovered the fake citations and sanctioned the lawyers with fines totaling USD 5,000. He also removed the primary attorney from the case. Why it happened The lawyers admitted using AI to generate the legal case citations, with one saying he had used AI for the first time to add case law supporting the exclusion of certain evidence. "Our internal artificial intelligence platform 'hallucinated' the cases in question while assisting our attorney in drafting the motion in limine," they wrote, per The Register . The lawyers admitted they failed to verify the accuracy of the AI-generated citations before filing, and two had not even reviewed the motions before submission. What it means For the plaintiffs, the incident could harm their case and delay justice for their injuries and property damage. More broadly, the incident highlights the dangers of uncritically trusting AI-generated content in legal proceedings, and serves as a cautionary tale for the legal profession about the risks of using AI without proper verification. System 🤖 ChatGPT Developer: OpenAI Country: USA Sector: Business/professional services Purpose: Generate legal citations Technology: Generative AI; Machine learning Issue: Accuracy/reliability Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014.150.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014/gov.uscourts.wyd.64014.161.0.pdf

Date it happened

2025-02-01

Product, system or model

MX2.law

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