Georgia lawyer sanctioned for AI use in comedian Katt Williams’ assault case

A Georgia lawyer who represents four women suing comedian Katt Williams must spend the next five years telling clients and judges she relied on bogus legal arguments created by artificial intelligence, a federal judge in Atlanta has ruled.

The sanction against Loletha Hale, a Jonesboro-based attorney of 23 years who has twice tried to become a Henry County judge, was handed down Tuesday by U.S District Judge William Ray.

When trying to unseat Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero in 2022, Jonesboro attorney Loletha Hale published this campaign image on a public Facebook page. She lost the election. (Courtesy)

It relates to arguments Hale made in response to Williams’ attempt to throw out the case alleging he and several associates violently attacked four women outside an Atlanta club.

Ray said there’s nothing impermissible about using AI to draft a legal document, as long as it is checked for accuracy before being filed in court. He said Hale failed to do that with a brief she filed in August to keep the case against Williams going, as well as subsequent filings after being confronted with her errors.

“The Court recognizes that mistakes in drafting can happen, but it is Ms. Hale’s abdication of her responsibility to ensure that the brief she provided to the Court was accurate and her cavalier attitude regarding her errors that is of most concern to this Court,” Ray wrote in a footnote of his order.

The judge could have fined Hale but chose instead to make her notify all her existing clients with cases in the federal trial court for Northern Georgia about her AI use and associated punishment.

Ray additionally ordered Hale to notify the court and file a copy of his order in all pending and future cases she has in the court for the next five years. He warned her that she will be further punished if she fails to comply.

Hale did not immediately respond Wednesday to questions about the ruling.

She appeared in court before Ray in late September but had little to say when probed about the issue. She said the case record speaks for itself.

“I do not have anything else to add,” Hale said in response to Ray’s questions during the Sept. 29 hearing. “I just rest on the record.”

Hale previously told Ray she had asked her daughter, who is not an attorney or paralegal, to draft the brief because she was preoccupied with a personal matter. Hale said she accidentally filed the brief her daughter prepared using AI instead of a corrected version.

Hale said she submitted the correct brief as soon as Williams’ lawyers in the case pointed out her fake case citations.

But in his order, Ray said Hale’s bogus legal arguments did not stop there. He said she clearly violated one of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which requires, in part, that attorneys make legitimate legal arguments in court.

At the September hearing, Hale said she hadn’t heard of that rule before and didn’t believe she violated it.

“When you file authority with the court that doesn’t even exist because they are hallucinated, that’s a problem,” Ray told Hale at the hearing. “There’s something tremendously wrong with the way you go about writing legal pleadings.”

It’s not the first time Ray has criticized Hale’s conduct. In 2021, he said Hale made “blatant misrepresentations” about a Georgia judge when she testified in an unrelated trial. Ray said he reported that incident to the State Bar of Georgia and has “grave concerns” about Hale’s professionalism.