Lawyer Has Duty To Cross-Verify : Supreme Court On Petition Citing Fake Judgments
'Because of artificial intelligence, lawyers and the judges have an additional duty to see whether it is a real or deep fake, the Court said.
The Supreme Court today emphasised that it is the duty of members of the Bar to verify judgments before placing reliance on them in petitions, after it was informed that a special leave petition cited certain fake judgments judgment.
A bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan dismissed the SLP, orally cautioning all lawyers to exercise due dillignece while citing authorities.
The counsel for the respondent submitted that one of the cited judgments in the petition did not exist, while some others existed, but did not contain the quotations attributed to them in the petition.
Justice Nagarathna observed that because of artificial intelligence, lawyers and judges now have an additional duty to see whether a judgment is real or a “deep fake.”
“What is this? Is this artificial intelligence or natural intelligence? Artificial intelligence is a different thing but natural intelligence doing this we cannot condone. Because of artificial intelligence the lawyers and the judges, we have an additional duty to see whether it is a real or deep fake”, she said.
When the Bench questioned the petitioner's counsel, he stated that he had drafted the petition and had obtained the judgments from articles on websites.
Justice Bhuyan said, “You should have cross verified. That is the duty of the lawyer.”
Justice Nagarathna advised him to refer to original sources. “Don't go by articles, go to the real judgement and verify,” she said. She highlighted that now that High Courts have ILR citations and the Supreme Court has SCR citations, which are official.
The Court close the SLP after accepting the petitioner's counsel's apology, once again telling all advocates to cross verify authorities before citing them.
Justice Nagarathna also requested Supreme Court Bar Association President Vikas Singh, who was present in court, to take steps to address the problem. “What to do about this problem? You have a conference on this. This is an additional burden on lawyers and judges now”, she said.