Well, well, well. Yet another attorney got busted for the misuse of AI to write briefs. The Mississippi Court of Appeals ordered famed Gulf Coast attorney Michael Crosby to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court after he filed a brief containing no less than eight phony citations.
A jury convicted Hunter Haas of grand larceny and armed robbery as a habitual offender in 2024. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Haas appealed to the Court of Appeals. Crosby submitted a brief on behalf of Haas to the Court.
Unfortunately, it appears the attorney cheated when he drafted the brief:
In this case, when reviewing the Appellant's Brief, this Court was wholly unable to locate eight cited authorities. Two of these authorities appear not to exist; three others led to cases with different names that did not match the case names as presented in the brief; and three citations returned cases from other jurisdictions that were represented to be from Mississippi. Furthermore, out of the authorities that this Court was able to locate without these problems, at least seven do not support the proposition for which appellate counsel cited. The Appellant's Brief was digitally signed by Mr. Crosby. The Appellant's Reply Brief purported to include ""corrections"" or ""replacements"" after the State pointed out the impossibility of retrieving certain citations. The Reply Brief likewise contains citations to cases for propositions and quotations not included in the cited authorities. The Reply Brief was also digitally signed by Mr. Crosby.
You can't make this up.
The Court ordered Crosby to show why it should not hold him in contempt of court and suffer the consequences of sanctions. The Court struck Crosby's brief and reply brief and ordered him to file a revised brief within thirty days.
Crosby must file a response to the Show Cause order within fourteen days after the brief is filed.
Kingfish note: The time is long past for the Bar and the Courts to start hammering these attorneys who misuse AI because they are not getting the message. Suspend their licenses. Hit them with fines of $5,000 or more. Charge them for the attorney's cost of responding to their phony filings. In other words, start passing out the pain. Period.
5 comments:
The MS Bar Association is spineless, and everyone knows it. They won't do anything about it.
Sounds like the hourly rate of attorneys really needs to go down. Anyone with Claude or Gemini can do their dang job!
Fortunately the courts seem to be more vertebrate.
It takes less than 10 minutes to verify your citations and it’s taught in law school. Just unbelievable that these idiots keep doing this when it’s been a known problem for years.
He seems to have a good reputation as a trial attorney but his history in the appellate courts has been abysmal. His briefs, when he manages to file them, are terrible. There are some good appellate attorneys who don't charge a ton. I don't know how the bad ones keep getting business.
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