Delaware Chancery Court fines lawyer $2,500 over AI-fabricated quotations in a brief

The Delaware Court of Chancery has sanctioned a lawyer $2,500 for a brief that contained fabricated quotations and mischaracterized legal authorities produced with a generative AI tool, according to a letter opinion by Vice Chancellor Lori W. Will dated November 13.

After the defendants spotted the errors, plaintiffs' counsel acknowledged using a GenAI tool without verifying its output and filed a corrected brief that removed the quotation marks but kept inaccurate legal propositions, the opinion says. "The use of GenAI in legal practice is neither forbidden nor inherently problematic," Will wrote, but counsel must use such tools with the care required by the court's Rule 11 and professional conduct rules. "That care was lacking here."

The court declined to sanction the firm, Richards, Layton & Finger, citing its comprehensive GenAI policy, mandatory ethics training and "commendable efforts to prevent Gen AI misuse." The partner who signed the brief, director Richard Rollo, "has since accepted full responsibility and expressed sincere contrition," the opinion says, and must pay the $2,500 personally to the court, Bloomberg Law reports.