Judge Accused of Using AI to Issue Garbled Ruling

Wingate’s original order also appears to quote portions of the initial lawsuit and the legislation that established Mississippi’s DEI prohibition, making it seem as though the phrases were taken verbatim from the texts. But the quoted phrases don’t appear in either the complaint or the legislation.
Wingate’s corrected order still cites a 1974 case from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk. However, when Mississippi Today attempted to search for that case, it appears that either it does not exist or the citation is incorrect.
. . . Attorneys have an ethical obligation to make truthful representations in court, so when they are caught using artificial intelligence, judges have applied sanctions and demanded explanations. Just this month, a federal judge in Colorado ordered two attorneys to pay thousands in fines after they used AI to write a mistake-riddled court filing.
But there’s little recourse when the tables are turned.
“If an attorney does this, a judge can demand explanations, but it’s not true in the other direction,” Frohock said. “We will probably never know what happened, unless an appellate court demands it.”

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Wingate’s original order also appears to quote portions of the initial lawsuit and the legislation that established Mississippi’s DEI prohibition, making it seem as though the phrases were taken verbatim from the texts. But the quoted phrases don’t appear in either the complaint or the legislation.
Wingate’s corrected order still cites a 1974 case from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cousins v. School Board of City of Norfolk. However, when Mississippi Today attempted to search for that case, it appears that either it does not exist or the citation is incorrect.
. . . Attorneys have an ethical obligation to make truthful representations in court, so when they are caught using artificial intelligence, judges have applied sanctions and demanded explanations. Just this month, a federal judge in Colorado ordered two attorneys to pay thousands in fines after they used AI to write a mistake-riddled court filing.
But there’s little recourse when the tables are turned.
“If an attorney does this, a judge can demand explanations, but it’s not true in the other direction,” Frohock said. “We will probably never know what happened, unless an appellate court demands it.”
This is like an onion of irony