The Jetson Plasma Iridescent Hoverboard sells for $148 at Walmart and allows riders to zip around on two wheels.
It’s powered by a lithium-ion battery and on Feb. 1, 2022, one at the Wadsworth home in Sweetwater County allegedly experienced a “thermal runaway,” causing it to burst into flames and burn down the home, according to a lawsuit filed in Wyoming District Federal Court.
Ryan Pasborg was running late for work as he drove past the Wadsworth family home on Highway 374 in James Town in rural Sweetwater County around 4:30 a.m. and saw smoke and flames coming from a bedroom window.
He then rushed inside and saved Stephanie Wadsworth and her 4-year-old boy Weston.
Stephanie suffered “devastating burns covering 35%” of her body, according to court documents. Weston was also severely burned, but survived, while Pasborg was honored for his heroism.
Now, in Federal District Court in Cheyenne, the Wadsworth family is suing Walmart and Jetson Electric Bikes LLC, manufacturer of the hoverboard. The Wadsworths are represented by attorneys based in California and Florida.
One of their attorneys, Rudwin Ayala of Orlando, Florida, was sanctioned recently when he used an artificialintelligence (AI) research tool while preparing a court brief countering arguments made by Walmart and Jetson.
The companies claim the fire originated in a “yellow shed outside the boy’s bedroom window.”
By constantly referring to this structure as a “smoking shed,” argued Ayala in his brief, the companies’ defense attorneys are attempting to “unduly influence a jury’s perception.”
To back up this claim, Ayala cited case law established in Meyer v. City of Cheyenne.
Ayala constructed other claims from seven additional cases.
“The problem with these cases,” wrote U.S. District Judge Kelly Rankin in a Feb. 6 order, “is that none exist.”
Robots In The Courtroom
“Litigators are beginning to make the jump … into the world of AI. When done right, AI can be incredibly beneficial for attorneys and the public,” wrote Rankin, adding. “However, the current state of AI has its shortcomings.”
The eight cases Rankin flagged as phony are the result of an AI “hallucination,” explained Rankin in a follow up filing Feb. 24.
“These hallucinations are not unique to the legal profession, as many scientific fields experience the same issue,” continued Rankin.
Generative AI, which uses large language models to predict content and sentence structure based on existing text and facts fed into the model, sometimes “perceives patterns that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate,” according to a fact sheet from IBM.
Ayala apparently uploaded a draft of his brief to MX2.law, which Rankin described as a website with an “in-house database” launched by Ayala’s firm, Morgan & Morgan, one of the nation’s larger law firms with 125 offices nationwide.
Ayala then instructed this AI tool to do the work of an attorney or paralegal by adding citations to case law that support the Wadsworths’ claims against Walmart and Jetson.
“These search inquiries apparently generated the fake cases,” continued Rankin, noting that without verifying their accuracy, Ayala included the fake cases in a Jan. 22 brief.
“Mr. Ayala further states that this was his first time ever using AI in such a way,” wrote Rankin, who removed Ayala from the case and fined him $3,000.
Part Of Growing Trend
“Advances in generative AI are helping reduce the time lawyers need to research and draft legal briefs, leading many law firms to contract with AI vendors or build their own AI tools,” reported Reuters on Feb. 18. “Sixty-three percent of lawyers surveyed by Reuters' parent company Thomson Reuters last year said they have used AI for work, and 12% said they use it regularly.”
This increased use has come with a growing number of embarrassing gaffs over hallucinated material mistakenly filed in court.
One case involved Michael Cohen, the former lawyer and fixer for President Donald Trump.
In a recent Minnesota case, according to Reuters, a federal judge said a misinformation expert destroyed his credibility with the court by referencing fake, AI-generated citations in a case involving a "deepfake" parody of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Wyoming case, continued Reuters, “stands out because it involves a well-known law firm and a big corporate defendant.”
Toys For The Kids
After saving Stephanie and Weston from their burning home and reuniting them with three other children who made it out on their own, Pasborg felt sorry for the family, which had just lost everything.
He ensured the children were reunited with their grandmother and taken to a warm, safe place.
Then Pasborg went home, grabbed some money and went shopping for clothing and toys for the children at Walmart.
Contact David Madison at david@cowboystatedaily.com
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
