Tyrone Blackburn is once again under fire in federal court after Fat Joe accused the attorney of relying on bogus AI-generated legal citations in a motion to dismiss the rapper’s defamation suit.
Fat Joe’s legal team argued that Blackburn’s motion to toss the case is riddled with “misrepresentations and fabrications of legal authority clearly generated by AI.”
The filing points to “at least ten instances” where Blackburn cited “hallucinated” case law—legal references that either don’t exist or misquote real rulings.
Fat Joe sued his former hypeman, Terrance Dixon, as well as Blackburn earlier this year, claiming they tried to extort him by spreading false accusations of sexual misconduct and underage relationships.
The lawsuit alleges Dixon and Blackburn launched a coordinated smear campaign to damage Fat Joe’s reputation and pressure him into a multimillion-dollar payout.
The claims include false social media posts accusing the Bronx rapper of pedophilia and orchestrating murder-for-hire plots.
Blackburn responded with a motion to dismiss in August, which Fat Joe’s attorneys now say is “fundamentally untrustworthy.”
“Blackburn’s egregious misconduct in drafting the Motion overshadows Defendants’ substantive arguments,” the filing states. It adds that Blackburn “irresponsibly relied on artificial intelligence-generated content without manual verification.”
The brief also highlights Blackburn’s checkered history with the courts. Fat Joe’s lawyers argue this isn’t a one-time error, but part of a pattern.
“It is time, once and for all, for Blackburn to be sanctioned for his flagrant disregard of his duties and responsibilities to the court in fabricating and intentionally misconstruing legal authority,” they wrote.
By submitting a motion filled with fake citations, Fat Joe’s team says Blackburn is attempting to derail the case and avoid accountability.
They ask the judge to deny the dismissal, impose sanctions, and move the case forward. This isn’t Blackburn’s first run-in with AI-related legal trouble.
Judges have previously reprimanded him for submitting documents “replete with inaccurate statements of law” and “wholly fabricated quotations from caselaw.”
One Pennsylvania judge recently found that Blackburn engaged in “a conscious effort to deceive and mislead the Court.”
In a separate defamation case involving T.D. Jakes, U.S. District Judge William Stickman ordered Blackburn to pay over $76,000 in legal fees after he submitted filings riddled with AI-generated citations and false claims.
Stickman called the errors “clear ethical violations of the highest order.”
Blackburn admitted the mistakes were caused by faulty AI tools and pleaded for leniency, saying the judgment would “effectively put him out of business.”
He told the court he had enrolled in legal education classes to avoid future issues. The judge in Fat Joe’s case has not yet ruled on the motion to dismiss.
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