3M's paid expert asked ChatGPT to show the company was 0% at fault, and the jury read the prompts
In the lawsuit over the January 2020 Watson Grinding explosion in Houston, which killed three people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes, plaintiffs' attorney Will Moye found a five-page "Citation Overlay" in 3M's defense materials and forced production of about 350 pages of ChatGPT prompts written by expert witness Josh Autenrieth of engineering firm KnightHawk, which 3M paid roughly $90,000. Prompts included "create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M" and "show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding." Trial testimony put the finished report at 85 to 90 percent chatbot output; Autenrieth, billing $475 an hour, said the AI drafted "a straw man to build off of." On August 11 the Harris County jury awarded $61.5 million and assigned 30 percent of fault to 3M and 70 percent to Watson Grinding. 404 Media first reported the story from the court record.