A federal judge ordered MyPillow founder Mike Lindell‘s attorneys to pay $6,000 in fines for using artificial intelligence (AI) to prepare court documents containing nearly 30 defective citations, including references to nonexistent cases and misquotations.
What Happened: U.S. District Judge Nina Wang in Denver sanctioned attorneys Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster $3,000 each on Monday for filing an AI-generated motion on February 25 that violated court rules, reported USA Today.
The motion responded to defamation claims by Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems director, who accused Lindell of spreading conspiracy theories about election rigging.
The sanctions stem from a broader defamation case where Coomer sued Lindell and his companies, MyPillow and FrankSpeech, in May 2022. A federal jury ruled in Coomer’s favor on June 16, ordering Lindell to pay over $2 million in damages, significantly below the $62.7 million Coomer requested.
During a pretrial conference, Judge Wang questioned Kachouroff about citation errors in the filing. The attorney admitted using AI assistance, stating he “drafted a motion, and then we ran it through AI.” When asked if he verified citations after AI processing, Kachouroff responded: “I personally did not check it. I am responsible for it not being checked.”
Why It Matters: Kachouroff claimed the error-laden motion was accidentally filed as a draft. However, Wang found the intended “final” version still contained substantive errors, some not present in the filed version. The judge determined the filing was not an inadvertent error based on “contradictory statements and the lack of corroborating evidence.”
“Neither Mr. Kachouroff nor Ms. DeMaster provided the Court any explanation as to how those citations appeared in any draft of the Opposition absent the use of generative artificial intelligence or gross carelessness by counsel,” Wang wrote.
Wang emphasized the sanctions represented “the least severe sanction adequate to deter and punish defense counsel,” noting the court “derives no joy from sanctioning attorneys who appear before it.”
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors
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