Background
Roberto Mata brought an action against Avianca, Inc. alleging personal injury caused by a service cart during a flight. The airline moved to dismiss under the Montreal Convention’s limitation period. The court granted the motion, but the case became widely known when Mata’s lawyers filed submissions citing non-existent judicial opinions. An investigation revealed that the documents had been generated using the artificial-intelligence tool ChatGPT. The court found that counsel had failed in their professional duties and imposed sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
AI interaction
“Existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings. … [They] abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.” This marked the first explicit U.S. judicial acknowledgment of ChatGPT in a sanctions context, defining the limits of AI-assisted drafting in litigation. The order emphasised that human lawyers remain solely responsible for the authenticity and verification of materials generated through AI tools.
Note: The Order on Sanctions formally reprimanded the lawyers for filing fictitious cases generated by ChatGPT and reaffirmed that AI cannot substitute for counsel’s duty of factual and legal verification in court filings.