A panel of Hawaiʻi judges sanctioned an island attorney this month after a filing he submitted to the court cited a fake case that might have been generated by artificial intelligence. 

James DiPasquale, a business attorney who works in Hawaiʻi and New York, was handling the appeal of a lawsuit while he also had his hands full preparing for a major federal civil rights trial. To assist with the appeal, DiPasquale said he enlisted the help of a per diem attorney in New York who produced a filing that cited the Hawaiʻi case Greenspan v. Greenspan.

A case that does not exist. 

DiPasquale apologized to the court, noting he was “genuinely embarrassed” to admit he had failed to check every citation before submitting the filing. 

“A fake citation made its way into a brief that I filed with the court,” he wrote in response to Civil Beat. “That’s on me.” 

The Hawaiʻi Intermediate Court of Appeals caught the error and asked DiPasquale if the citation was a “hallucinatory citation generated by an artificial intelligence platform.” DiPasquale told the court he doesn’t use AI in his own legal work and doesn’t know for sure if his hired help used it. 

That attorney, whom DiPasquale declined to name, has “ghosted me,” he told Civil Beat. 

In the end, the court fined DiPasquale $100. If DiPasquale’s citation was indeed AI-generated, his admonition would be among the first of its kind involving a Hawaiʻi attorney. He joins the ranks of at least two other pro se litigants — people representing themselves in court — who submitted court records Hawaiʻi judges suspect were written with AI, documents show. 

Lawyers across the country have been getting busted using AI-generated legal arguments that cite fictitious precedents. Language learning models such as ChatGPT have been known to create citations that sound real but are fabricated. And attorneys elsewhere have faced consequences for using them. Major consequences.

One California judge recently imposed a fine of more than $30,000 on two law firms and said “no reasonably competent attorney should out-source research and writing” to artificial intelligence tools. 

The issue has captured the attention of the courts in Hawaiʻi, whose leaders are exploring the subject. 

Last year, Hawaiʻi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald ordered the formation of a committee on AI and the courts to research the technology’s capabilities and determine how the courts should approach it. 

In an initial set of guidance issued in January, Recktenwald noted that attorneys must continue to follow the state’s rules on professional conduct and civil procedure. A final report from the committee is due before Dec. 15. 

DiPasquale said in a statement to Civil Beat that this has been a learning opportunity.  

“Whether it’s an associate, a per diem, or some AI tool in the background, none of that matters once the document is filed,” he said. “Your name is on it. You’re responsible for what’s in it. I learned that lesson the hard way — and it’s one I won’t forget.”