Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case

Frustrated by fake citations and flowery prose packed with “out-of-left-field” references to ancient libraries and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a New York federal judge took the rare step of terminating a case this week due to a lawyer’s repeated misuse of AI when drafting filings.

In an order on Thursday, district judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that the extraordinary sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations.

One of those filings was “noteworthy,” Failla said, “for its conspicuously florid prose.” Where some of Feldman’s filings contained grammatical errors and run-on sentences, this filing seemed glaringly different stylistically.

It featured, the judge noted, “an extended quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and metaphors comparing legal advocacy to gardening and the leaving of indelible ‘mark[s] upon the clay.’” The Bradbury quote is below:

“Everyone ...