In a Houston courtroom, the ancient compact between truth and testimony was quietly tested when an expert witness leaned on an algorithm to construct the case for a corporation's innocence. The 2020 Watson Grinding explosion had already claimed three lives and scarred a community; what the trial revealed was a second kind of damage — the erosion of trust in the human judgment that courts depend upon. A jury awarded $61.5 million to the victims, but the more lasting verdict may belong to a broader reckoning: that tools built to please cannot be trusted to illuminate.
Expert witness's ChatGPT-drafted testimony backfires in $61.5M verdict against 3M
The 2020 factory explosion killed three people and damaged hundreds of homes and businesses; the jury awarded victims $61.5 million in damages.