An attorney facing financial penalties for including nonexistent case citations, dubbed “AI hallucinations” from ChatGPT, in his filings is now appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit over a separate $16,000 sanction lodged against him for discovery violations.
Raja Rajan, a Philadelphia-based defense attorney, filed a notice of appeal last week, challenging three orders from U.S. District Judge Kai N. Scott of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in the case captioned Bunce v. Visual Technology Innovations. In August, Scott ordered the defendants to turn over information about how a $1 million loan from the plaintiff, Mark L. Bunce, was spent in the underlying dispute. Rajan submitted heavily redacted documents, claiming the information was “sensitive,” but the discovery was not filed under seal. Scott found in part that Rajan defied the court’s order, and in a Jan. 8 order, the judge ordered the attorney to pay opposing counsel fees, totaling approximately $16,000.