Courts just ruled your ChatGPT chats are protected

Litigators now face a question that didn’t exist five years ago: are the prompts a party types into ChatGPT while building a case discoverable by the other side? Within two days this June, courts in Texas and New York answered for the first time, and both sided with protection

In a decision issued on June 3, 2026 in Tate Group Automotive, LLC v. Legacy Automotive Capital (LLC), Judge Grant Dorfman of the Texas Business Court, Eleventh Division, decided that ChatGPT chats of Kris Tate, who is the principal of the business but not an attorney, fell under the attorney work-product privilege

Are your ChatGPT litigation chats discoverable?

In making this determination, the judge cited Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 192.5, which provides protection for materials generated by or for a party rather than just by attorneys

Most importantly, however, Dorfman required Tate Group to reveal which of the discovery materials had been inputted into ChatGPT

The next day, Justice Rhonda Fischer of the Supreme Court, Nassau County, quashed a subpoena in Assini v. Hayward seeking a self-represented defendant’s entire OpenAI account

The court held that using a commercial AI tool doesn’t itself waive confidentiality, comparing third-party technical access to cloud storage. Both rulings rejected the argument that entering case strategy into ChatGPT hands it to the opposing side

In Conservation Law Foundation vs Shell Oil Co., Magistrate Judge Thomas Farrish ordered climate historian Dr Naomi Oreskes to produce the AI prompts she used to filter Shell’s document production while preparing her expert report

The discovery of an expert’s methodology is allowed by Farrish because, unlike an individual’s own strategy of litigation, it is discoverable under Rule 26 in order for the opposing side to verify the accuracy of the opinion. The order in question is stayed pending objection

The decisions have created a line: the use of AI for the development of legal strategies is protected, while the use of AI for the production of evidence or expert opinions is discoverable

Legal professionals already advise their clients to set up separate accounts for AI litigation work to ensure confidentiality

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Source: www.thenews.com.pk