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 fewer 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.
40 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.
@3:56 Most attorneys are total idiots. Seriously, the truly bright ones are super rare. If they didn’t have this entire judicial “system” that requires us to pay for their existence then they would all be used car salesmen. Another group of idiots.
Yes. The COA isn't playing. I'm betting the COA heavily sanctions Crosby for his screw up, as well it should.
Well, then by all means go for it.
Does anyone believe the Bar Association is going to drop the hammer on the hand that feeds it?
Can't help but wonder how many attorneys are doing this and *not* getting caught.
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.
Maybe my fellow attorneys should stick with Westlaw and actually read the authorities they want to cite
Because a lot of people don’t understand the difference between a good trial lawyer and a good appellate lawyer. There’s a world of difference between the two.
You will have to forgive someone for thinking their MS bar card is a license to malpractice considering the clowns that are tolerated in the profession.
Hallucinating is not just for people on LSD or magic mushrooms any longer.
We need insight from TheLaw!!! I have not seen a post from him lately.
@3:47 - You do not know what you are talking about. Bad take. Lawyers are still needed. Everyone wants to bad mouth lawyers until they need one.
Been following generative AI since OpenAI's product release went "boom" in November 2022. I thought it would make our jobs as attorneys easier. But watching it play out, it's the opposite. Now you have to double check every little detail to make sure nothing is hallucinated. It may not even be you who's using AI. If you're citing some secondary authority, they could have pulled judicial lies out of the depths of chatgpt. Or a colleague's brief who has covered a topic before could have inadvertently quoted a smorgasbord of claude delirium outputs. It casts a blanket of doubt on everything until verified. Well... I say "you have to double check everything." But that's not completely accurate. You could just run the risk of getting a SHOW CAUSE flash across your screen. Thaaanks you little backpropagation instruments of doom.
Last week I couldn't even spell attorney; today I are one.
@4:48 he has a passable at best reputation in criminal defense. His attempted forays into civil litigation/PI are hilarious. When I was in insurance defense his responses to summary judgment motions would get passed around the office for everyone to laugh at. When he would want to especially emphasize something, he would so so in all caps red size 20 font. He’s a joke and always has been
Justice is blind.
Think about that for a minute, and then ask who enforces compliance to judicial ethics.
Bingo!
Media attention may force the Bar to get serious about enforcing ethics rules broken during litigation. Usually, the Bar tells you to "tell it to the judge" and the judge tells you to 'tell it to the Bar." So, no one tells it.
Yep, worthless good ole' boys/girls connected to Doyle Wayne or Becky Renee.....wouldn't want to upset someone.
It's surprising that there hasn't been an "uprising" by the legal community regarding AI, because in time, eventually - the technology will be more perfected - and the first profession that could easily be replaced is lawyers. Then we could apply it to judges, and it would likely work if programmed to follow actual statute and Constitutions according to the "black letter" of their texts.
@4:19 PM, no, I don’t believe the Bar membership will do anything but sigh in relief and mutter “But for the grace of God…”.
The bar does need AI rules asap. As well as the courts. But as always we'll be last to do anything about it. When used correctly, it's a great tool. Do otherwise and calamity ensues. Even judges are using it. Run some recent long winded opinions thru a checker
A few years ago he failed to file a brief in a criminal case. The Bar gave him a public reprimand. He APPEALED it thereby insuring that there's an opinion in the Southern Reporter forever chronicling his misconduct. That's someone who is not acting logically. His written work is as bad as Abby Robinson's - just endless strings of words going nowhere.
AI might not be the worst thing for the legal profession. Maybe it will go back to the old way where lawyers were truly learned and studied. No need to double check a citation on the basic standard of review/common law tort elements if you eventually check the citations so much they become recognizable. Then you only spend time reading new/more obscure cases. Sounds like a barrister to me.
"Can't help but wonder how many attorneys are doing this and *not* getting caught."
Probably few, if any, because it's the other's side's job to catch them. That' the nature of our adversarial court system.
@The Law - Are you even a real lawyer? Your comments make me think you are a paralegal.
@12:01 - I know it's just to bait me into a response. But I'll bite. What exactly did I say that makes you think I'm a "paralegal" and not "a real lawyer"? Tell me exactly what you are referring to, and then I'll respond to it.
Curious whether Michael and I were in law school together, I glanced at his website. It has a section titled, "In the News," that (oddly enough) makes no mention of this story. He needs AI to write an update.
I think he graduated from UM in 1987.
@The Law - Your post is very insightful about an issue that had escaped me, i.e., secondary authorities. If a treatise addresses an issue but relies on fake case law, that could become a nightmare for the poor lawyer who cites the treatise. This places too high of a burden on an attorney, especially if it is a well-known and (once) reliable treatise. The person who commented that you do not sound like a lawyer is clearly a moron who is trying to upset you. Keep the posts coming! Your comments are greatly valued.
@7:54pm: thank you. And exactly. Two that I use often are Wright & Miller and the Mississippi Encyclopedia of Law. On the latter, I trust Donald Campbell as editor. But there’s a whole bunch of contributors who write entries for it. I’ve been watching to see if an AI virus makes its way into one of those.
The Miss. Bar cannot act on this UNLESS there is a complaint filed against the attorney. This is so in any attorney misconduct case. The more you know.....
@thelaw - @11:22 a.m. - that's why I thought you were a paralegal. No attorney worth their salt would rely on a secondary source like Wright & Miller. As a paralegal (or first year associate), does your supervising attorney tell you to look in Wright & Miller?
@2:27 pm: Thank you for clarifying what you meant. That gives me an opportunity to provide a proper response.
See, Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton Tr. for Vista-Pro Auto., LLC, 146 S. Ct. 579, 583, 223 L. Ed. 2d 438 (2026) (relying upon Wright & Miller as “a prominent treatise”); Bus. Guides, Inc. v. Chromatic Commc'ns Enters., Inc., 498 U.S. 533, 542, 111 S. Ct. 922, 929, 112 L. Ed. 2d 1140 (1991) (citing “5A C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1335, pp. 57–58 (2d ed. 1990) (hereinafter Wright & Miller)” (quote in original); Hollywood Marine, Inc. v. M/V Artie James, 755 F.2d 414, 415 (5th Cir. 1985) (“as Professors Wright , Miller, Cooper and Gressman observe…”) (in n. 3: “citing 15 C. Wright, A. Miller, and E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3909 (1976) and authorities cited therein”); Humphrey v. Citibank N.A., No. 2:12CV148-MPM-JMV, 2013 WL 12178128, at *1 (N.D. Miss. Jan. 3, 2013), report and recommendation adopted, No. 2:12CV148-MPM-JMV, 2013 WL 12178129 (N.D. Miss. Jan. 24, 2013) (“See also Wright & Miller, supra.”); Tyson v. Dykes, No. CIVA2:07CV75KS-MTP, 2007 WL 3357189, at *3 (S.D. Miss. Nov. 8, 2007) (citing 5A C. WRIGHT & A. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE: Civil 2d § 1366 at 485 (1990)); Brocato v. Mississippi Publishers Corp., 503 So. 2d 241, 244 (Miss. 1987) (“As noted in Wright , Miller & Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil 2d § 2716, p. 658 (1983)”); Perry v. Andy, 858 So. 2d 143, 148 (Miss. 2003) (“Again, the language in Holmes, adopted from Wright & Miller”); Vasser v. Bibleway M.B. Church, 50 So. 3d 381, 383 (Miss. Ct. App. 2010) (“See also 7C Wright, Miller & Kane, § 1916, at 529–30.”); In re Google, L.L.C., 172 F.4th 450, 453 (5th Cir. 2026) (same); Fucich v. Ashe, No. 1:25-CV-160-TBM-RPM, 2026 WL 908938, at *2 (S.D. Miss. Mar. 31, 2026) (citing WRIGHT & MILLER'S FEDERAL PRACTICE & PROCEDURE § 1069 (4th ed. 2025)).
Do you know what all that is? That is every Court from every one of our jurisdictions relying upon and citing Wright & Miller—from the U.S. Supreme Court, to the Fifth Circuit, to the N.D. of Mississippi, S.D. of Mississippi, the Mississippi Supreme Court, and the Mississippi Court of Appeals. Practitioners throughout the country have cited Wright & Miller for the past 60 years. If you actually think all of these Courts (from Federal to State) (from SCOTUS to the MS Supreme Court) all consist of attorneys who aren’t “worth their salt,” then I don’t know what to tell you.
@the Law: looks like you use ChapGPT, too. Prompt: Dear ChapGPT, create a string of cases that refer to Wright & Miller so I can save face
@2:27 p.m. - You are wrong, sir. The Law prevails again!
"If you actually think all of these Courts (from Federal to State) (from SCOTUS to the MS Supreme Court) all consist of attorneys who aren’t 'worth their salt,' then I don’t know what to tell you."
Ah, legalspeak! Do ALL of those courts ALL consist (entirely) of those not "worth their salt?" How much is their salt worth, and is that replacement cost, cash value, or ???
If the question is, "Are all of the judges currently on all of those courts great legal minds," or even, "Are all of the judges currently on all of those courts competent jurists?," the answer is "no." Even if we expand the question to, "Has there been, at least in the last 50 years, even a moment in which every judge on all of those courts was at least a competent jurist?," still "no." But that is not the real point. The point at issue is, "Is citing Wright & Miller competent practice?" The answer is clear. "It depends." Now, if the question is phrased, "Is citing to Wright & Miller INcompetent practice?," then the answer is also clear. "Damn, KF, you really do need to get with the troll management program." Well, that, or "Mikey, haven't you fucked up enough for at least a while?"
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