B.C. lawyer reprimanded for citing fake cases invented by ChatGPT

The cases would have provided compelling precedent for a divorced dad to take his children to China — had they been real.

But instead of savouring courtroom victory, the Vancouver lawyer for a millionaire embroiled in an acrimonious split has been told to personally compensate her client’s ex-wife’s lawyers for the time it took them to learn the cases she hoped to cite were conjured up by ChatGPT.

In a decision released Monday, a B.C. Supreme Court judge reprimanded lawyer Chong Ke for including two AI “hallucinations” in an application filed last December.

The cases never made it into Ke’s arguments; they were withdrawn once she learned they were non-existent.

Justice David Masuhara said he didn’t think the lawyer intended to deceive the court — but he was troubled all the same.

“As this case has unfortunately made clear, generative AI is still no substitute for the professional expertise

How Attorney Sorrell Trope Invented the Hollywood Divorce

Michael Trope remembers the day he entered the living room of his childhood home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles to find Cary Grant sipping a martini. Michael’s father, famed attorney Sorrell Trope, was representing Grant in his 1968 divorce from Dyan Cannon.

“My father used to love to tell the story about how Cary Grant became his client,” says Michael Trope, an LA-based trial lawyer and former sports agent.

“Cary Grant went to a mattress store to buy a mattress,” Michael Trope continues. “He was talking to the mattress salesman and testing out mattresses because he wanted to buy a bed. And he started complaining to this mattress salesman about his divorce. The mattress salesman then said, ‘Oh, I went through a divorce. And I had a great experience with my lawyer. He did a really phenomenal job for me.’ And Cary Grant said, ‘Well, who was that?’