[Eugene Volokh] Over $24K in Sanctions for Alleged AI Hallucinations in Case Against FIFA

For more on the underlying errors in the plaintiffs' brief, see here. An excerpt from yesterday's sanctions order, in Puerto Rico Soccer League NFP, Corp. v. Federacion Puertorriquena de Futbol:

Plaintiffs' motions included at least fifty-five defective citations, requiring hours of work on the Court's end to check the accuracy of each citation. Plaintiffs' counsel never offered a satisfactory explanation for why their citations in multiple motions were so severely flawed. Plaintiffs denied using generative artificial intelligence. But the sheer number of inaccurate or nonexistent citations suggests otherwise. And in any event, the violations of Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 and applicable ethical rules occurred regardless of whether they were caused by misuse of generative artificial intelligence or other means. This behavior stands in contrast to several of the cases [that imposed much lower sanctions], where various attorneys facing sanctions offered an explanation as to how they erred.

Defendants actually asked for $60K in compensation for the attorney fees and research costs expended to deal with the incorrect citations, but the court reduced that by 60%:

The Court is aware that the errors committed by Plaintiffs' counsel received national attention, and that given both attorneys work for small firms and describe themselves as solo practitioners, the initial lodestar amount would prove a heavy financial burden. Furthermore, it is well-known that "an appropriate sanction should be no more severe than necessary to assure the deterrent objective" of Fed. R. Civ. P. 11…. [T]he Court is aware of no cases where a sanction approaching sixty thousand dollars for the misuse of artificial intelligence has been applied.

Salvador J. Antonetti-Stutts and Aníbal A. Román Medina (O'Neill & Borges LLC) and John J. Kuster, Jon Muenz, and Amanda M. Blau (Sidley & Austin LLP) represented defendants on the sanctions motion.

The post Over $24K in Sanctions for Alleged AI Hallucinations in Case Against FIFA appeared first on Reason.com.