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The Daily Docket

A newsletter by Reuters and Westlaw

By Sara Merken

Good morning. Today we take a look at the growing number of AI errors that are reaching into court opinions, expert testimony and prosecutors' briefs. Plus, Hershey beat a lawsuit over its Halloween-themed Reese's pumpkins; Weil lost more M&A partners to a rival law firm; and a judge ordered the Trump administration to give 30 days notice before taking any steps to demolish the Kennedy Center. We made it to Friday!

AI error-ridden court filings surge despite three years of court sanctions

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

In the span of three days this month, a defense lawyer was rebuked for filing fabricated police witness testimony in a New Mexico murder case, prosecutors in Oklahoma disclosed that a judge's order there had cited fake cases, and a lawyer representing State Farm in Los Angeles was fined for erroneous citations across seven court filings.

The materials in each case were produced using generative AI, adding to a mountain of made-up, misquoted, misleading or incorrectly cited legal filings since the technology debuted on a mass scale in 2022.

What’s happening:
Three years after the first U.S. court sanction over AI-generated errors, the number of attorneys admitting they used AI carelessly keeps growing, with AI errors now reaching into court opinions, expert testimony and prosecutors' briefs. AI "hallucinations" have now surfaced in at least 1,395 cases in U.S. state and federal courts, according to a researcher tracking the cases on his website.

Mike Scarcella has the story here.

Coming up today

Cannabis: The 4th Circuit will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by hemp company Bluestar Operations challenging the DEA’s classification of the synthetic cannabinoid HHC as a Schedule I controlled substance.
Health: The D.C. Circuit will take up a case where water utilities companies are challenging the EPA’s national drinking water standards for six PFAS substances, claiming the agency failed to accurately assess the rule's costs and consequences.
Weaponization fund: U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria will hold a motion hearing in one of the many challenges to the DOJ’s $1.776 billion “weaponization” fund.
Government: U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan will hear oral arguments in Maurene Comey's lawsuit against the Trump administration over her firing from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office.
Bribery: Javier Aguilar, a former oil trader at Vitol, one of the world's largest energy trading companies, is scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction in Brooklyn federal court on charges of paying bribes to officials in Mexico and Ecuador.

Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.

More top news

Industry insight

Two London-based M&A partners from Weil, David Avery-Gee and Sarah Flaherty, are joining rival law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in the latest exit of prominent dealmakers ‌from Weil.
The U.S. federal judiciary is working to develop fresh guidance for judges on the use of generative AI in court operations, with an aim to make new recommendations within the next year, a judge tasked with assessing the emerging technology said.
Kirkland partner Kasdin Mitchell, a corporate litigator who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, won Senate confirmation to serve as a federal judge in a Texas court that has become a favorite for conservative litigants challenging Democratic policies.
The 10th Circuit heard arguments over whether a lawyer can be forced to maintain his paid membership in a state bar association after the attorney claimed his dues funded the publication of political or irrelevant articles.

$710 million

That’s how much Credit Acceptance, one of the nation's largest subprime auto lenders, agreed to pay in a settlement with 40 U.S. states and D.C. to resolve charges it drove thousands of