Powhatan County School Board v. Skinger et al

Misrepresented: Case Law | Cited T.A. v. McKinney Independent School District, 861 F.2d 655 (5th Cir. 1988), but that reporter cite corresponds to Jones v. Otis Elevator Co., 861 F.2d 655 (11th Cir. 1988), unrelated. Outcome: Relevant motions stricken. "The pervasive misrepresentations of the law in Lucas' filings cannot be tolerated. It serves to make a mockery of the judicial process. It causes an enormous waste of judicial resources to try to find cited cases that do not exist and to determine whether a cited authority is relevant or binding, only to determine that most are neither.In like fashion, Lucas' adversaries also must run to ground the nonexistent cases or address patently irrelevant ones. The adversaries must thus incur needless legal fees and expenses caused by Lucas' pervasive citations to nonexistent or irrelevant cases.[...]However, as previously noted Lucas appears to be judgment proof so monetary sanctions likely will not deter her from the abusive practices reflected in her filings and in her previously announced, consistently followed, abuse of the litigation proceedings created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400, et seq. (“IDEA”). So, the Court must find some other way to protect the interests of justice and to deter Lucas from the abuses which have come to mark her approach to participation as a defendant in the judicial process.In this case, the most appropriate remedy is to strike Lucas' filings where they are burdensome by virtue of volume and exceed permitted page limits, where they are not cogent or understandable (when given the generous latitude afforded pro se litigants), and where they misrepresent the law by citing nonexistent or utterly irrelevant cases."In a subsequent Opinion, the court declined to reconsider or review its findings, pointing out that:"To begin, it is unclear what Lucas means by "contested" citations. The citations that the Court found to not exist are not "contested." They simply do not exist. There is no contesting that fact because the Court checked each citation that was referenced in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, exactly as Lucas cited them (and through other research means), and could not find any citation that matched what Lucas cited. That research demonstrates that the Court'sfindings are, in fact, supported rather than "[u]nsupported." Id.Then, in no way did the Court "wrongly assume[]" that these citations to nonexistent legal authority were "'fabricated' due to the use of generative AI." Id. The Court meticulously checked every citation that it held did not exist in those decisions. Those decisions were not based on "assumptions" but, instead, on the fact that either (1) no case existed under the reporter citation, case name, or quotation that Lucas used, or (2) a case with the reporter citation did exist but was to an entirely different case than the one cited by Lucas and had no relevancy to the issues of this case. ECF No. 170, at 520. And, there was no incorrect assumption that those nonexistent legal authorities were generated, hallucinated, or fabricated by AI because Lucas admitted, on the record, to using AI when writing her filings with the Court. The fact that her citations to nonexistent legal authority are so pervasive, in volume and in location throughout her filings, can lead to only one plausible conclusion: that an AI program hallucinated them in an effort to meet whatever Lucas' desired outcome was based on the prompt that she put into the AI program. As the Court described in its MEMORANDUM OPINION, this is becoming an alarmingly prevalent occurrence commonto AI programs. Id. at 23-26. It is exceedingly clear that it occurred here.[...]The MOTION also complains that the Court did not give Lucas an "opportunity to verify or correct citations." Id.Wholly apart from the fact that it is the litigant's (pro se or represented) burden to verify citations, there is no reason to have accorded Lucas the opportunity to verify because the problem was extensive and pervasive across at least six filings. Moreover, the Court actually did what should have been done before the MOTION was filed by determining that those citations do not exist. No further verification is necessary. And, after a diligent search, if the Court could not find the legal authorities that Lucas purported to rely upon and present as real and binding, it is a folly to believe that Lucas' efforts at "correction" would have returned anything different. Further, she could have taken the opportunity in this MOTION to go through—citation by citation—and "verify" or "correct" them to demonstrate to the Court that its findings were, in fact, incorrect, rather than just baldly and without evidence claiming them to be so. She did not do that."