Surendra Singh and Associates ordered to pay costs out of own coffers and may have to answer to Legal Practice Council.
A law firm has been left with legal egg on its face – and the possibility of facing a Legal Practice Council (LPC) investigation – for allegedly using “Google” and artificial intelligence (AI) to source what were non-existent legal citations in court proceedings.
Pietermaritzburg-based Surendra Singh and Associates has also been ordered to pay the costs, from its own coffers, of two court hearings in September last year during which Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Elsja-Marie Bezuidenhout interrogated its court documents and references to case law.
From submissions and her own research, the judge concluded that “while the real source of the authorities quoted remain unknown” it was likely that the firm had relied on AI technology which was “irresponsible and downright unprofessional”.
Judge Bezuidenhout referred her ruling to the LPC and “urged that it obtain a recording of the entire proceedings including any comments made before I entered court as well as submissions made by the various representatives of the applicant”.
The law firm was representing controversial KwaZulu-Natal politician Godfrey Mvundla who was elected Mayor of Umvoti last year but was then suspended, a decision he claimed had been taken at an “unlawful meeting” of the council.
While Mvundla secured an interim interdict against the Umvoti Local Municipality, Judge Bezuidenhout ultimately discharged the interdict and rescinded the order.
Mvundla then applied for leave to appeal against her ruling. In this application his lawyers cited various “case authorities” to support their submissions that Judge Bezuidenhout had been wrong in law in some of her findings.
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