Federal judge removes attorneys from Alabama DOC lawsuit after AI fabricated citations

This article was originally published by Alabama Reflector.

A federal judge Wednesday reprimanded three attorneys working for the Alabama Department of Corrections and removed them from a civil rights lawsuit involving the agency after one used artificial intelligence to do research for a court filing that led to fabricated citations.

U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Alabama Anna M. Manasco also referred the matter, involving Butler Snow attorneys Matthew B. Reeves, William J. Cranford and William R. Lunsford to the Alabama State Bar Association and other licensing authorities.

“The court further finds that no lesser sanction will serve the necessary deterrent purpose, otherwise rectify this misconduct, or vindicate judicial authority,” Manasco said in the order she issued.

The attorneys had represented DOC in the case. Manasco also suspended proceedings for 30 days to allow the Alabama Attorney General’s Office to hire counsel to represent the ADOC.

Butler Snow declined comment on Thursday and a message was left with Lunsford seeking comment on Thursday. Lunsford has been awarded millions of dollars in contracts to represent the state in legal matters, almost exclusively in lawsuits of alleged wrongdoing by the ADOC. In December, the state awarded him a legal contract worth about $4.8 million. That was after Alabama offered him $14.9 million in July 2023 from contracts that were amended to allow him to represent the state. He was also awarded $7.68 million the previous month.

The attorneys represented DOC in a lawsuit brought by Frankie Johnson, who alleges that after being stabbed in Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer in 2019, the department failed to provide adequate protection, resulting in a second attack the following March.

Earlier this year, the DOC attorneys attempted to get Johnson to deliver a deposition in June. Johnson’s attorneys said that would not give him enough time to prepare. In response, Reeves and Lunsford filed a motion arguing that Johnson could be compelled to testify.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys noted four questionable citations. One included a case that was not relevant to another issue; a second said a decision known as Kelly v. City of Birmingham was a federal case decided in 2021, when it was a state case from 1939, and two other citations referenced cases that did not exist.

Johnson’s attorneys found another fabricated citation in a second filing.

At a hearing in May, Reeves and Lunsford expressed remorse and apologized to the court and the counsel. Reeves said he had started using ChatGPT for dietary research, but then began using it for professional research and then other citations. Reeves did not check the accuracy of the citations.

Butler Snow said in a filing last month that the incident was “an isolated event” and did not find any other instances in which attorneys used artificial intelligence to generate court citations after reviewing 50 court dockets filed in Alabama federal courts or the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The court has no difficulty finding that Mr. Reeves’s misconduct was more than mere recklessness,” Manasco wrote in an order. “In the light of repeated general warnings from federal courts about the risks of bogus citations generated by AI, as well as the persistent specific warnings, policies, and expectations of his colleagues and law firm with respect to AI, Mr. Reeves’s misconduct was particularly egregious.”

Cranford, who also works at the Butler Snow law firm, originally drafted the motion, which at first did not include the fabricated citations. He then submitted the draft to Reeves and Lunsford, who were supervising his work on the case. The draft was then edited to include the fabricated citations. He told the court that he reviewed the updated draft for grammar and typos, “but did not conduct an independent review of the legal authorities added,” according to Manasco’s order.

Lunsford said he did not realize that Reeves used AI to generate fabricated citations in filings to the court in the case.

Manasco wrote that Lunsford “simply made no effort whatsoever to verify the contents of the motions for himself (or even to ask someone else to check for him), despite his presence on these motions.” Manasco also criticized Lunsford for asking to be excused from the original hearing

“Both before and at the show cause hearing, Mr. Lunsford deepened rather than allayed the court’s concerns about his understanding of his professional responsibility with respect to court filings that bear his name in the signature block,” the judge wrote. The judge also criticized Lunsford for arguing that it was the first time Reeves had ever used AI to generate citations without providing evidence to back the claim.

“In any event, Mr. Lunsford made clear that performing (or verifying) legal research for each case is not something that he requires of the team he leads,” Manasco said in the order.

Manasco had signaled in May that she was considering harsher sanctions because incidents involving the use of AI continue to recur even though judges have issued training and imposed other education requirements.

“If fines and public embarrassment were effective deterrents, there would not be so many cases to cite,” Manasco wrote. “And in any event, fines do not account for the extreme dereliction of professional responsibility that fabricating citations reflects, nor for the many harms it causes. In any event, a fine would not rectify the egregious misconduct in this case.”