- A judge in London says a plaintiff used smart glasses to cheat in court
- The claimant was fed real-time responses from the smart glasses
- The evidence was dismissed as “unreliable and untruthful”
It sounds like a deleted scene from Suitsbut a judge in a London High Court case has revealed that a claimant recently used smart glasses to get real-time coaching on their answers – and then later blamed ChatGPT.
The insolvency case, which involved the liquidation of a Lithuanian company co-owned by Laimonas Jakstys, took place in January, but was recently reported by Legal Futures (via 404 Media) when the judgment was announced. And it’s full of fascinating, if slightly comic, clashes between a courtroom and new technology.
The referee first noticed something was wrong when Jakstys began to pause before answering. “Right at the start of his cross-examination, he seemed to pause for a while before answering the questions put to him,” Judge Agnello KC noted in the judgment.
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After this happened a few times, defense barrister Sarah Walker said she could “hear disturbances from around Mr Jaksty” and this was backed up by the interpreter. The judge asked the plaintiff to remove his glasses before continuing with the cross-examination, but that was only the start of a comical turn.
Later, while the interpreter was translating a question, Mr Jakstys’ mobile phone apparently began to “broadcast loudly the voice of someone speaking”, the judgment said. “There was clearly someone on the cell phone talking to Mr. Jakstys. He then removed his cell phone from his inside jacket pocket. At my direction, the smart glasses and his cell phone were placed in the hands of his attorney,” Judge Agnello KC wrote.
Funnily enough, Jakstys appeared in court wearing the glasses the next day, but was then told to take them off. “When questioned, Mr. Jakstys denied that he used the smart glasses to receive the answers that he had to give in court to the questions asked. He also denied that his smart glasses were linked to his mobile phone at the time he gave evidence before me,” the judge added.
Unfortunately, the evidence did not support this. According to Jakstys’ call log, he had made and received calls from someone marked on his phone as “abra kadabra,” including one just before he entered the witness box. When pressed on the identity of the “abra kadabra”, Jakstys claimed it was a taxi driver. But the judge was understandably not convinced.
‘A career first for me’
The smart glasses, the pause before answering and the mysterious “abra kadabra” switch – this case has all the ingredients for a CSINetflix documentary style. But there was one final twist.
When asked about the voice blaring from his phone when his smart glasses were removed, “his explanation was that he thought it was ChatGPT”. Understandably, Judge Agnello KC concluded that this “lacks any credibility”.
Jakstys also mysteriously seemed to fight without his glasses. “Once there was Mr. Jakstys [sic] no longer wearing his fancy glasses, he hesitated quite a bit before answering questions. Often he would be asked a question and he would pause for some time before asking for the question to be repeated, otherwise he would say that he did not understand the question. This often happened when it was clear to me that he simply did not know what his answer should be,” Judge Agnello KC concluded.
The inevitable result was that Jakstys’ evidence was rejected “in its entirety”. Summarizing the testimony, the judge concluded “he was untruthful about his use of the smart glasses and about being coached through the smart glasses”.
But of course the case also raises broader questions about the clash between our long-standing institutions and technology that is rapidly overtaking them. As lawyer Saara Idelbi noted about the case on LinkedIn: “This time it was a human coach. Next time it will be AI. This case shows us how dangerous smart wearables can be.”
Defense barrister Sarah Walker also told Legal Futures: “This was a career first for me, but with technological advances it may well be something that litigants will have to deal with much more often in the coming years.”
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