Park v. Kim
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (No. 22-2057)
- Judge
- Circuit Judges Cabranes, Sullivan, Bianco (per curiam)
- Date filed
- 2022-08-19
- Sanctioned
- 2024-01-30
- AI tool
- ChatGPT
- Monetary penalty
- No monetary penalty; formal referral of Jae S. Lee to the Court's Grievance Panel for disciplinary investigation, and public opinion identifying counsel by name.
- Outcome
- Second Circuit dismissed the appeal and referred counsel Jae S. Lee to the Grievance Panel after her reply brief cited a non-existent case. Lee admitted using ChatGPT and failing to verify the citation.
What happened
This was a Fair Labor Standards Act appeal in which appellant Jae S. Lee, counsel for the plaintiff, filed a reply brief citing "Matter of Bourguignon v. Coordinated Behavioral Health Servs., Inc., 114 A.D.3d 947 (3d Dep't 2014)" for the proposition that a corporate defendant's failure to appear at a deposition can support entry of default. The Second Circuit could not locate the case in any reporter.
On order to show cause, Lee acknowledged that she had used ChatGPT to draft the reply and had not independently verified the citation. The Second Circuit's January 30, 2024 per curiam opinion dismissed the appeal on the merits and separately referred Lee to the court's Grievance Panel. The panel wrote: "At the very least, the duties imposed by [Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 46(c)] require that attorneys read, and thereby confirm the existence and validity of, the legal authorities on which they rely." The court expressly rejected the notion that using an AI tool relieved the attorney of the underlying verification duty.
Because the citation was in a reply brief, opposing counsel had no chance to point out the fabrication — the panel itself flagged it during preparation for oral argument. The court noted that this made the misconduct materially worse than a scenario where opposing counsel could have caught the error and briefed around it.
The fabricated citations
Matter of Bourguignon v. Coordinated Behavioral Health Servs., Inc., 114 A.D.3d 947 (3d Dep't 2014)
Does not exist. No New York Appellate Division opinion matches this caption or reporter cite. ChatGPT generated the citation and Lee did not verify it against a primary source.
How Citation Safe would have caught this
The single fabricated cite in Park v. Kim would have failed a Citation Safe reporter-existence check in under two seconds. The tool queries the New York Appellate Division reporter directly through CourtListener and returns "cite not found" for any 114 A.D.3d volume/page combination that does not resolve to a real opinion. The Second Circuit's Grievance Panel referral would not have followed.
Sources
Run Opposition Check on any brief you’re about to file for — $49.
Full annotated report on every citation in the opposing filing. Attach it to your Rule 11 or sanctions motion.