AI Errors Cost Oregon Attorney $10K After Court Imposes Fine for False Information in Legal Briefing
By Editorial Team
An Oregon attorney, William Ghiorso, based in Salem, has been fined $10,000 by the court for including false legal citations in his opening brief. The court found that Ghiorso’s brief contained at least 15 fabricated citations and nine quotations that do not exist.
Appellate Judge Scott Shorr highlighted that the citations and quotes in Ghiorso’s brief did not align with any actual legal cases. The attorney attributed these errors to using AI technology for legal research, which led to the generation of inaccurate information.
During the proceedings, Ghiorso explained that his law clerk had utilized a search engine that has since been discontinued. He clarified that there was no intention to misrepresent the information, attributing the inaccuracies to the faulty search engine.
However, Judge Shorr emphasized that despite the AI’s involvement, Ghiorso was ultimately responsible for the content of the brief bearing his name. This incident underscores the concept of “AI hallucinations,” where artificial intelligence erroneously creates information without factual basis.
Portland State University computer science professor Bart Massey, who studies AI-generated content in legal documents, noted that the citations produced by AI can be so convincing that attorneys may struggle to differentiate between real and fabricated legal precedents.
According to a database tracking such incidents, there have been nearly 1,200 cases globally where attorneys have cited non-existent legal references due to AI errors. In Oregon, a previous case in December resulted in an attorney being fined for a similar offense, establishing a precedent for penalizing lawyers $500 to $1,000 per AI-generated error.
While Ghiorso’s fine could have amounted to $16,500 based on this precedent, the court opted to impose a $10,000 penalty due to the attorney’s implementation of new measures to prevent such errors in the future. Despite the mitigation, the $10,000 fine remains the largest imposed for this type of mistake in Oregon’s legal history.
