A Federal Court judge made a decision July 10 that highlights how AI can threaten the integrity of the legal system.
Justice Simon Fothergill sided with Lloyd’s Register Canada Ltd., which sought to have a motion record removed from the court file because it was “scandalous, frivolous, vexatious, and otherwise an abuse of process.”
Fothergill also considered that former B.C. marine surveyor Munchang Choi used AI when filing the motion and included a reference to a court case that does not exist.
Fothergill said Choi previously relied on AI in “other proceedings,” and that in those cases misrepresented more than 30 legal authorities and legal principles.
Choi admitted that he used generative AI tools but said that this use was limited to drafting and preliminary research.
He denied that one specific citation in question was an AI hallucination, or a fabricated case invented by the technology, but instead was a case of him simply making a mistake when writing the citation.
“He notes that he is a self-represented litigant with mental health issues, and asks the court not to remove the motion record from the court file and refrain from imposing punitive measures,” Fothergill wrote.
He then added that Choi’s “explanation for citing a non-existent case that was apparently generated by AI is unsatisfactory and cannot be accepted by the court.”
He awarded Lloyd’s Register Canada with costs valued at $500.
Choi’s dispute with Lloyd’s Register Canada goes back to 2023 when he first filed a complaint with the director of employment standards, claiming wage loss, bonus payments, medical and other expenses and compensation for length of service against Lloyd’s, which was his former employer.
His complaint alleged “harassment, bullying, work exclusion, threats, intimidation, defamation, humiliation, and false accusations at his workplace, and retaliatory dismissal,” according to an employment standards tribunal appeal decision last year.
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