U.S. District Judge Julie. A Robinson on Monday fined Sandeep Seth of SethLaw PLLC, who took responsibility for the erroneous January filing, $5,000 and revoked his admission to the court. Seth was ordered to report to disciplinary authorities where he is licensed.
Christopher M. Joe and Kenneth P. Kula of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC were fined $3,000 each, and Joe was ordered to file a certificate outlining internal procedures to ensure future court filings are accurate. David R. Cooper of Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith LLP was fined $1,000, and a third Buether Joe attorney, Michael Doell, avoided sanctions from Judge Robinson.
"This has been an embarrassing lesson. Firms should not use AI as a case law research tool without strict independent verification policies in place in order to avoid errors," Seth said in a statement to Law360.
Joe and Cooper did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment.
The attorneys are representing Lexos Media IP LLC, which sued Overstock.com Inc. in 2022, alleging infringement of three patents that cover technology that alters an internet user's cursor.
The Lexos team submitted briefs opposing Overstock's motion for summary judgment and a motion to exclude expert testimony. The briefs included artificial intelligence-hallucinated case citations, prompting Judge Robinson in December to order the lawyers to explain themselves.
Seth said in a January declaration he was primarily responsible for drafting the opposition to the motion to exclude expert testimony. While drafting the opposition, he said he prompted ChatGPT to help him find Tenth Circuit and other federal case law relevant to the case. Seth said he incorporated three of the four case citations he was given and did not double-check them as he had intended. He said he later incorporated more citations from ChatGPT in the brief and again did not check for accuracy.
Seth apologized and said that at the time he drafted the brief, his mother and aunt were in the hospital and died shortly thereafter, leading to his focus to be mostly on his family circumstances.
The other attorneys on the Lexos team said they had no role in the erroneous citations, and the Buether Joe & Counselors lawyers added they do not allow the use of AI in drafting legal briefs.
Judge Robinson said Monday there was "no question" that citing nonexistent case law violates court rules.
"It is undisputed that only Mr. Seth utilized ChatGPT and inserted the inaccurate legal authority from those queries into the documents, and that none of the other attorneys were aware that he did so," the judge said. "But all of the attorneys who signed the briefs had a nondelegable duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry into the legal authority relied on in the briefs before signing their names."
Judge Robinson found Doell was put in an "untenable position by his superiors" when they told him to draft much of the summary judgment response, not including the portion influenced by Seth's ChatGPT research. Doell was also told to provide limited edits of Seth's filing, but not to conduct a "substantive review," according to the order. Yet Doell played a role in drafting the documents and had he made a reasonable inquiry, he would have found the numerous errors in the documents, the judge said.
Joe and Kula did not read the documents prior to filing, according to the order, and should have known that signing them without review would violate court rules.
Cooper, Lexos' counsel in Kansas, read the documents, but did not check the citations even though he had found a citation error in a previous brief in the case, Judge Robinson noted.
"There was simply no oversight provided by the many seasoned attorneys of record for Lexos when responding to these motions, despite the fact that they each had a duty under Rule 11, not to mention the rules of professional responsibility, to ensure that the documents they signed were based on existing law," Judge Robinson said.
The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 5,995,102; 6,118,449; and 7,975,241.
Lexos Media is represented by David R. Cooper of Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith LLP, Christopher M. Joe, Kenneth P. Kula and Michael W. Doell of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, and Sandeep Seth of SethLaw PLLC.
Overstock is represented by Ben Stelter-Embry of Embry Law LLC, and Neil J. McNabnay, Ricardo Bonilla, Michael R. Ellis, Noel F. Chakkalakal and Philip Brown of Fish & Richardson PC.
The case is Lexos Media IP LLC v. Overstock.com Inc., case number 2:22-cv-02324, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
--Editing by Lakshna Mehta.
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