In a sign of the AI times, the federal court in the Southern District of New York recently entered a protective order that includes an AI-restriction paragraph:
Corrections happen
The Michigan Supreme Court decided Marion v Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company (Docket No. 164298) on June 5, 2024. The .pdf that was first released was created at 2:29 p.m. Just like with lawyers and paralegals, sometimes an oversight is recognized after the file is submitted. And that happened here. An updated .pdf file was…
Adobe Acrobat’s “compare files” feature saves time to identify corrected changes
It happens to everyone: jurists, lawyers, paralegals, and the self-represented. A letter is sent. A brief is filed. An opinion or order is issued. And only later a typo, innocent misstatement, omission, or new information is learned that requires correction. The correction is made and sent out, but the corrected version doesn’t identify what was…
T-minus 74 days. Many important MSC decisions are on the way.
Appellate geeks often track which justice authored which decision during a sitting. SCOTUSblog posts one form of that data here. As a court’s term gets closer to its end, legal pundits speculate about who could be writing the undecided cases. We will hear and see more of this as the Supreme Court of the United…
Asking Claude.ai to outline a court decision
Last August, I shared my experience using Claude.ai to outline case briefs (pretty good!). Today, I took the current (free) version of Claude.ai for a spin to outline a recent unanimous Michigan Supreme Court opinion. tl;dr: Claude.ai did a really good job. My only quibble is that it left out the role of one of…
How judges can draft and add easy-to-understand summaries in their written decisions
Summary for Pro Se Plaintiff The magistrate judge is recommending that the motion for summary judgment be granted. Your evidence does not show that Nurse Yule, Nurse Practitioner Housley, or Dr. Wong acted in ways that they knew were likely to cause you additional harm or suffering. Such evidence is required to show a violation…
Procedural takeaways when there are AI/fake-case concerns
In less than a year after the ChatGPT usage in Mata v Avianca, Inc., SD NY (Docket No. 1:22-cv-01461) captured headlines, we’re starting to see a pattern and lessons for how adverse parties and courts are handling suspected fake-case court filings. The pattern often follows the routine of other claims when reliability may be questioned…
Should judges with public social media accounts who block other users or delete others’ comments care about Lindke v Freed? Maybe. It depends.
Friday’s unanimous SCOTUS opinion (Lindke v Freed, 601 US __ (2024)) involving the Port Huron, Michigan city manager who sometimes deleted comments and later blocked a user from his public Facebook page offers interesting food for thought for other public officials—including judicial officers. Even though the case has been remanded for more fact-finding, it seems…
Florida attorney receives one-year suspension from practicing in a Florida federal court for including fake cases in court filings (and for other misconduct)
Today, a federal judge in the Middle District of Florida issued a one-year suspension order to attorney Thomas Grant Neusom for naming fabricated cases in filed court documents and for violating other court procedures, processes, and civility expectations. The relevant facts and proceedings toggle between two case files: Clark Pear LLC v. MVP Realty Associates…
Justice Sotomayor’s call to action about public participation and public service, “in word and deed”
Supreme Court of the United States Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett recently participated in a conversation at the National Governors Association Conference. To an applauding audience of public officials, Justice Sotomayor encouraged the public servants to be mindful of the example they want others to follow. (Video link will open in new tab.)…