A Utah attorney has been officially sanctioned by the state\u2019s Court of Appeals after submitting a legal brief containing a fabricated court case citation\u2014generated by the AI chatbot ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to court documents reported by ABC4, attorney Richard Bednar<\/strong> filed a petition citing a case titled Royer v. Nelson<\/em>, which upon review, was found to be nonexistent in any legal database. The case was apparently created by ChatGPT and mistakenly included as legitimate legal precedent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its ruling, the Utah Court of Appeals acknowledged the growing use of AI in legal research but made clear that it does not absolve attorneys of their ethical responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The petition was jointly filed by Bednar and fellow attorney\u00a0Douglas Durbano<\/strong>\u00a0in a bid for an interlocutory appeal. However, it later emerged that Durbano had no role in preparing the document. Instead, the brief was authored by an unlicensed law clerk\u2014who has since been fired\u2014using generative AI tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During an April hearing, Bednar admitted to the error, apologized, and accepted full responsibility. He also offered to reimburse the client and pay the opposing party\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of the sanctions, the court ordered Bednar to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incident adds to growing concerns over the unchecked use of AI in legal proceedings. It mirrors a similar case last year in New York, where two lawyers faced penalties for including fictitious ChatGPT-generated cases in a court brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Utah attorney has been officially sanctioned by the state\u2019s Court of Appeals after submitting a legal brief containing a fabricated court case citation\u2014generated by the AI chatbot ChatGPT. According to court documents reported by ABC4, attorney Richard Bednar filed a petition citing a case titled Royer v. Nelson, which upon review, was found to be nonexistent in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":89192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n