Plaintiffs' Lawyers Admit AI Generated Erroneous Case Citations in Federal Court Filing Against Walmart

February 6, 2025

Lawyers Rudwin Ayala, T. Michael Morgan (Morgan & Morgan), and Taly Goody (Goody Law Group) were sanctioned $5,000 after their Wyoming federal lawsuit filing against Walmart contained fake cases generated by AI. Judge Kelly Rankin imposed the sanctions, removing Ayala from the case and emphasizing the importance of verifying AI sources. The filing, flagged by Walmart’s legal team, led to its withdrawal and an internal review.

This incident underscores the need for responsible AI governance and trustworthy AI practices in the legal sector. It highlights the potential risks of relying solely on AI outputs without proper verification. For those interested in shaping safe and secure AI practices, join us at HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM to Govern, Map, Measure, or Manage such incidents and contribute to harm prevention and the development of guardrails for AI.
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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
taly-goody, t.-michael-morgan, rudwin-ayala, morgan-and-morgan, goody-law-group
Alleged developer
unspecified-large-language-model-developer
Alleged harmed parties
taly-goody, t.-michael-morgan, rudwin-ayala, plaintiffs-in-wyoming-walmart-hoverboard-lawsuit, legal-system, judicial-integrity, clients-of-morgan-and-morgan, clients-of-goody-law-group

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/960

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.