BEAUMONT, TX – Brandon Monk, the principal of the Monk Law Firm here, was fined $2,000 and must attend a class on the use of AI in legal work after Monk used citations from two nonexistent cases in a filing submitted in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas which “included quotations from the citations that couldn’t be verified,” according to LegalDive.
The “plaintiff’s attorney in a wrongful termination case faces sanctions for including nonexistent cases and fake quotations in a Texas federal court filing” because, said District Judge Marcia Crone in a November 25 ruling, “Monk submitted the response (to defense counsel’s motion for summary judgment) without reading the cases cited, or even confirming the existence or validity of the cases.”
According to the article, “Inclusion of fake citations in filings has become a concern since a New York lawyer in 2023 submitted the first recognized instance of an AI tool generating citations to nonexistent cases in a personal injury lawsuit.”
LegalDive added “there have been other instances of fake cases being cited, including by former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen” leading to “court systems at the national, state and local levels have responded by amending their rules to outline the kind of due diligence lawyers are expected to conduct when working with AI and also what sanctions they face for violations.”
LegalDive notes how, in “Monk’s case, the attorney was filing a reply to a motion to dismiss on behalf of the plaintiff in a wrongful termination lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber” and “Defendants’ counsel discovered the problem when they tried to research the cited cases, according to the ruling.”
Due to this mishap, the article relates, “Opposing counsel had to spend ‘additional time searching for the cases cited by Monk, researching their legal theory of the case, and drafting the reply brief,’” the judge said. “According to counsel for Goodyear, the cost of drafting its reply brief was $7,521.26.”
The judge called out Monk for waiting until the court intervened to go back over his work rather than after opposing counsel discovered the problem. “Despite Goodyear raising the issues with the citations in the response in its reply brief, it was not until after the court’s show cause order that he attempted to locate the cases and verify their content,” the judge said.
The judge ruled that “the false citations are a violation of Rule 11(b) under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and of local rules of the Eastern District” with Rule 11 requiring “attorneys to confirm the existence and validity of the legal authorities they’re relying on, and the local district rules require attorneys to verify that computer-generated content complies with their duty to exercise candor, diligence, and utmost respect to the judiciary.”
