Federal judge dismisses Los Angeles Film School whistleblower lawsuit with prejudice

A federal judge has dismissed a whistleblower lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles Film School of massive student loan fraud, as reported by Variety and The Wrap. The judge threw out the case with prejudice and sanctioned the attorney representing the claimants for submitting a legal brief written by ChatGPT. Yahoo News UK, IMDb, and MyNewsLA.com also reported the dismissal of the lawsuit. [1][2][4][5][6][9]

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2024 by two former executives at the institution, according to Variety. The Wrap and Variety reported that the complaint alleged the Los Angeles Film School engaged in a scheme to pay outside vendors to hire its own students, which inflated its official job placement figures. [1][2]

The Wrap reported that the dismissal with prejudice was ordered on the grounds that the claims regarding inflated job placement statistics occurred outside the statute of limitations. In addition to the statute of limitations issue, the plaintiffs' legal counsel faced court sanctions specifically for submitting an artificial intelligence-generated brief, according to reports from The Wrap and Variety. [1][2][9]

Whistleblowing involves an employee or insider revealing information about alleged illegal or fraudulent activities within an organization to external entities or internal supervisors. ChatGPT, the generative artificial intelligence tool developed by OpenAI that generated the legal brief in this case, operates using large language models. [7][9]