The pillow salesman’s lawyers claim they inadvertently filed the wrong version of their document, and defended the use of AI in generating court documents.
Lawyers defending MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a Colorado defamation case could face legal discipline after admitting to filing a court document generated by artificial intelligence that was rife with errors, including citing legal cases that do not exist.
During a pre-trial hearing last week, District Court Judge Nina Wang questioned Lindell’s lead attorney, Christopher Kachouroff, about a signed document he and his team filed in February. Wang discovered “nearly thirty defective citations,” in their document, according to a court order the judge filed after the hearing.
According to Wang’s order, the document filed by Kachouroff’s team included misquotes of cited cases, misrepresentations of principles of law in cited cases, discussions of legal principles “that simply do not appear within such decisions,” and “most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist.”
Kachouroff denied intentionally misleading the court, but Wang’s order said he “declined to explain” how his team’s filing “became replete with such fundamental errors.”
“Time and time again, when Mr. Kachouroff was asked for an explanation of why citations to legal authorities were inaccurate, he declined to offer any explanation,” Wang wrote.
It was only after Wang asked Kachouroff directly that he admitted using artificial intelligence to author the document, according to the order.
In a response filed on Friday, Kachouroff and his team wrote that they were “unaware of any errors or issues” with their filing, and were “caught off-guard” by the judge’s questioning, which came “without any notice.” That lack of advance notice, they argued, “left them unprepared to explain the filing at the time.”
They claimed that they inadvertently filed the wrong version of their document, and defended the use of AI in generating court documents. “There is nothing wrong with using AI when used properly,” they wrote, adding that they “had no reason to believe that an AI-generated or unverified draft had been submitted.”
Wang ordered Kachouroff and his team to show cause why the court should not sanction Lindell, his companies, and his legal team over the error. Kachouroff and another lawyer on his team, Jennifer DeMaster, could also face disciplinary proceedings, the order states.
Lindell and his companies, MyPillow and Frankspeech, were sued in 2022 by Eric Coomer, the former director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, who accused Lindell of defamation during his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The lawsuit alleges that Lindell aligned himself with an “Antifa-obsessed” conspiratorial podcaster in Colorado and targeted Coomer “with false allegations of criminal conduct on a scale unprecedented in American history.”
Lindell accused Coomer of being “a traitor to the United States,” according to the lawsuit. As a result of Lindell’s efforts, Coomer’s reputation was “irreparably tarnished,” he received “credible death threats,” and can no longer work in the elections industry.