It went badly. Really badly. Four lawyers in a federal court case in Mississippi got hit with sanctions after relying too hard on AI to draft their filings. The case, Withers v. City of Aberdeen, started as a squabble over solar project fees. Tom Withers III argued the city owed him money. He didn’t get in trouble, though. His team did. So did the city’s legal representatives.
Two from each side used software that made up cases.
Or worse. Cited statutes that didn’t exist in Mississippi law.
Judge Sharion Aycock wasn’t impressed. She fined the attorneys and shut down the entire case. “Blindly relying on technology,” she wrote. That resulted in what she called hallucinatory citations. It wasn’t just a tech glitch. It was a violation of Rule 11. Which basically says when you sign a legal document you’re swearing to a judge that it’s truthful. These lawyers failed to verify that truth.
The New York Times picked up on the story. Marketing lawyer Rob Freund spotted it first on X calling it a comedy of AI errors. 404 Media ran with it. Suddenly everyone is looking at this Mississippi courtroom disaster.
Is this just a glitch in the machine? Or a failure of human responsibility?
AI hallucinations happen often. Large language models stitch together plausible-sounding sentences without understanding the truth. They sound convincing. That’s the danger.
New Rules, New Risks
This isn’t an isolated incident. Lawyers have been burned by AI mistakes before. New York got strict. Starting June 1 results from tools like ChatGPT lose attorney-client privilege. No more hiding behind secrecy claims for generated content.
The American Bar Association knows this is tricky territory. Michelle A. Behnke the current ABA president told CNET that generative AI demands scrutiny. Oversight isn’t optional. “The ABA is here to navigate new law and new technology with its members,” she said.
They released a report in December. Best practices. Policy advice. It’s all about balancing innovation with caution. But the advice remains simple and often ignored by those chasing speed: know the benefits. Know the risks.
Don’t assume the output is correct. Verify it. Always verify it.
Otherwise the bill comes due in court.
