A line attorney for the U.S. Justice Department is in hot water, along with his entire office, after a plaintiff representing themselves in North Carolina exposed them for having made-up quotes in court filings.
According to Bloomberg Law, “The US attorney’s office is representing the Defense Department in a lawsuit by a North Carolina pro se litigant challenging a policy limiting availability of GLP-1 weight loss medications for TRICARE for Life participants. The plaintiff asserted that a response brief signed by assistant US attorney Rudy Renfer included fabricated quotes and misstated the holdings of several cases.”
“In a reply, Renfer said he ‘inadvertently included incorrect citations to case law from this circuit’ and attributed the errors to the ‘inadvertent filing of an unfinalized draft document,’” the report continued.
While Renfer did not clarify how this error happened, Bloomberg noted that “it comes as judges and opposing counsel have accused attorneys of AI-generated fabrications in filings, leading to monetary penalties in some instances” — although neither Renfer nor his office have confirmed or denied the filings were made using AI.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Numbers is evidently incensed by this situation, and wrote that “because of the seriousness of these issues,” leadership at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina are summoned for a hearing to explain what happened and justify why Renfer shouldn’t be sanctioned. “Having reviewed the filings in this matter and other submissions by Renfer, the court has serious concerns about the accuracy of certain quotations and representations in Renfer’s filings and the explanation offered for their inclusion,” Numbers added.
It’s not just lawyers and federal prosecutors who have been caught cutting corners with AI; last year, a Trump-appointed federal judge used ChatGPT to determine whether the term “monkey a–” is “racially hostile” while deciding a hostile work environment case against a trucking company.
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