Second Circuit cautions lawyer against AI use in $82 million NYC subway injury case

Filed 48m ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

The Path of the Goblin King

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Circusmonti · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

An attorney representing a Brazilian tourist who lost an arm and a leg in a 2016 Brooklyn subway accident admitted to the Second Circuit that AI-generated errors, including quotations attributed to cases that never contained them, made their way into his brief defending her $82 million jury award.

Judges Maria Araújo Kahn and Rachel Kovner pressed Elliot Shields on whether AI was to blame; he confirmed it was, calling the mistakes professionally embarrassing. Meanwhile the MTA's attorney argued the agency deserves immunity because it studied platform screen doors via a task force before declining to install them, calling the decision an incremental trade-off given limited resources.

The court gave Shields a week to refile. The underlying question, whether the MTA's years of data on exposed-track dangers amounted to negligence or careful planning, remains unresolved.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A lawyer asking a computer to write his homework and then telling a federal judge he was just being sloppy is the kind of excuse that wouldn't fly with a high school teacher, let alone three judges in robes. The MTA's argument is its own special comedy: we studied the problem so hard we decided to keep doing nothing. Somewhere a woman missing an arm and a leg is waiting on two different flavors of institutional shrug.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: The Path of the Goblin King · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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