Extract from Joshua Gilliland’s article “California Proposed Law on Gen AI For Lawyers”
Proposed California Law Bridges the Gap Between AI Innovation and Attorney Ethics
It was only a matter of time before state legislatures addressed lawyers’ use of “Generative AI” in litigation. With its ever-growing use in law, there have been dozens of orders calling out AI-hallucinated case citations from the use of Gen AI. (An often cited case for this proposition is Sanders v. United States, 176 Fed. Cl. 163, 167 (2025)).
In December 2025, the ugly use of Gen AI appeared with fabricated facts in a declaration that manufactured citations to deposition transcripts, grossly mischaracterized other testimony, and misstated facts in the record, in an opposition to a motion for summary judgement. Pauliah v. Univ. of Miss. Med. Ctr., No. 3:23-CV-3113-CWR-ASH, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 267306, at *7-8 (S.D. Miss. Dec. 30, 2025).
Gen Ai making up facts in a motion for summary judgment can result in finding a declaration was filed in bad faith, loss of the motion, and sanctions.
