By John Byrne
Let this be your daily reminder not to use fake cases in your briefs. The Eleventh Circuit devoted an entire section of its recent opinion in Akerlund et al. v. Atlas Air, Inc. to lambasting a lawyer for citing hallucinated cases in his brief even after he was warned. Opening that section by noting that it had “saved the worst for last,” the Court got into granular detail about the lawyer’s misuse of AI. Judge Grant wrote the opinion, joined by Judge Rosenbaum and Judge Kidd. The Court wrote:
"We expect that when lawyers submit briefs, they give us their best view of what the law is, and how that law supports their clients. We read those briefs carefully—not just because they are the product of counsel’s time, effort, and skill, but because they help us as we try to reach the right answer. All that is lost if a lawyer decides that it is not worthwhile to do the work to persuade us—if he is willing to sign his name on whatever a machine churns out without so much as checking it for accuracy. We cannot do our job the same way unless lawyers do theirs.” You can read the opinion here.
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