New York
Man Employs A.I. Avatar in Legal Appeal, and Judge Isn’t Amused
Jerome Dewald sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap in front of an appellate panel of New York State judges, ready to argue for a reversal of a lower court’s decision in his dispute with a former employer.
The court had allowed Mr. Dewald, who is not a lawyer and was representing himself, to accompany his argument with a prerecorded video presentation.
As the video began to play, it showed a man seemingly younger than Mr. Dewald’s 74 years wearing a blue collared shirt and a beige sweater and standing in front of what appeared to be a blurred virtual background.
A few seconds into the video, one of the judges, confused by the image on the screen, asked Mr. Dewald if the man was his lawyer.
“I generated that,” Mr. Dewald responded. “That is not a real person.”
The judge, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels of the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, paused for a moment. It was clear she was displeased with his answer.
“It would have been nice to know that when you made your application,” she snapped at him.
“I don’t appreciate being misled,” she added before yelling for someone to turn off the video.
What Mr. Dewald failed to disclose was that he had created the digital avatar using artificial intelligence software, the latest example of A.I. creeping into the U.S. legal system in potentially troubling ways.
The hearing at which Mr. Dewald made his presentation, on March 26, was filmed by court system cameras and reported earlier by The Associated Press.
Reached on Friday, Mr. Dewald, the plaintiff in the case, said he had been overwhelmed by embarrassment at the hearing. He said he had sent the judges a letter of apology shortly afterward, expressing his deep regret and acknowledging that his actions had “inadvertently misled” the court.
He said he had resorted to using the software after stumbling over his words in previous legal proceedings. Using A.I. for the presentation, he thought, might ease the pressure he felt in the courtroom.
He said he had planned to make a digital version of himself but had encountered “technical difficulties” in doing so, which prompted him to create a fake person for the recording instead.
“My intent was never to deceive but rather to present my arguments in the most efficient manner possible,” he said in his letter to the judges. “However, I recognize that proper disclosure and transparency must always take precedence.”
A self-described entrepreneur, Mr. Dewald was appealing an earlier ruling in a contract dispute with a former employer. He eventually presented an oral argument at the appellate hearing, stammering and taking frequent pauses to regroup and read prepared remarks from his cellphone.
As embarrassed as he might be, Mr. Dewald could take some comfort in the fact that actual lawyers have gotten into trouble for using A.I. in court.
In 2023, a New York lawyer faced severe repercussions after he used ChatGPT to create a legal brief riddled with fake judicial opinions and legal citations. The case showcased the flaws in relying on artificial intelligence and reverberated throughout the legal trade.
The same year, Michael Cohen, a former lawyer and fixer for President Trump, provided his lawyer with phony legal citations he had gotten from Google Bard, an artificial intelligence program. Mr. Cohen ultimately pleaded for mercy from the federal judge presiding over his case, emphasizing that he had not known the generative text service could provide false information.
Some experts say that artificial intelligence and large language models can be helpful to people who have legal matters to deal with but cannot afford lawyers. Still, the technology’s risks remain.
“They can still hallucinate — produce very compelling looking information” that is actually “either fake or nonsensical,” said Daniel Shin, the assistant director of research at the Center for Legal and Court Technology at the William & Mary Law School. “That risk has to be addressed.”
New York
Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years
A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.
The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.
Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.
The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.
The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.
Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”
Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.
“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”
On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.
At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.
Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.
Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.
Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.
According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.
In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.
Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”
But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”
“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.
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