AI hallucinated case law in insurance company's filings in L.A. County house fire dispute
Summary
Attorneys for State Farm apologized to a judge after submitting legal briefings rife with artificial intelligence hallucinations and nonexistent case law in an insurance dispute over a fire-damaged Carson home. The attorneys cited several cases to support their arguments, including a California Supreme Court decision involving Pacific Gas & Electric allegedly handed down in 1996, a nonexistent 2021 case brought by the government, and an imagined 2014 case involving State Farm. Jacquelene Robinson, an attorney with Musick, Peeler & Garrett, the outside counsel representing State Farm, wrote in an Aug. 11 motion that she used Irys, a legal AI company, but failed to check that the citations were correct. The blunder was first caught by attorney Michael Shaolian, who sued State Farm in 2024 for alleged bad-faith handling of the insurance claim of Fa'alagilagi Meni-Silga. State Farm's spokesperson Tom Hartmann stated that the company is working to ensure "appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent similar errors in the future."
(Source:Headtopics)