Associated Incidents
A federal judge has sanctioned two attorneys representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell after they filed a court document generated using artificial intelligence that was riddled with errors. The lawyers, Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster, were each ordered to pay $3,000 for violating court rules.
Judge Nina Y. Wang of the US District Court in Denver issued the sanctions on Monday (July 7), ruling that the attorneys were “not reasonable” in certifying and submitting the motion, which contained nearly 30 faulty citations.
In a scathing order, Judge Wang detailed how the motion referenced non-existent legal cases and misrepresented principles of law.
The original and "corrected" versions of the motion were both problematic. “Even the revised filing contained several of the same substantive errors that were specifically discussed at the hearing,” Wang wrote.
She noted that “legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions” were cited, suggesting either the misuse of generative AI or gross carelessness.
Wang said she was not convinced by the attorneys' explanations that the filing was an “inadvertent error.”
“It was the attorneys’ contradictory statements and the lack of corroborating evidence that led the court to believe that the filing… was not ‘an inadvertent error’,” she wrote.
The judge found it especially troubling that emails between the attorneys contained draft versions of the motion already filled with errors, including fake citations.
Although Kachouroff admitted in court to using AI tools, Judge Wang said his later responses appeared “puzzlingly defiant.”
She called his effort to shift the blame for the erroneous filing “troubling and not well-taken,” adding that “neither Mr. Kachouroff nor Ms. DeMaster provided the Court any explanation as to how those citations appeared... absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness.”
Mike Lindell, the client in the case, was not penalized. Kachouroff told the court that Lindell had no knowledge of the attorneys' use of AI tools in preparing the legal documents.
Judge Wang emphasised that the sanctions were a measured response.
“Notwithstanding any suggestion to the contrary, this Court derives no joy from sanctioning attorneys who appear before it,” she wrote. “This sanction is the least severe adequate to deter and punish defense counsel in this instance.”
The AI-generated motion was filed during Lindell’s defamation case, which concluded last month when a Denver jury found him liable for spreading false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.