In what was described as a case pitting ‘real lawyers against a robot lawyer’, a DoNotPay court case has been dismissed by a federal court in Illinois. In March, the MillerKing law firm, based in Illinois, commenced a putative class action on behalf of all US-based law firms against the self-help legal service, alleging false advertising and association under the Federal Lanham Act and the Illinois state law.
In their claim, the firm alleged that DoNotPay was unfair in its assertion that it empowered its users to ‘[f]ight corporations, beat bureaucracy and sue anyone at the press of a button,’ even though it lacked the legal licence to do so.
DoNotPay’s legal representation, which consists of human, not AI lawyers, moved for the case’s dismissal, arguing MillerKing was lacking in standing to sue in a federal court.
In a recent proceeding, the court sided with the motion by DoNotPay, holding that MillerKing could not establish standing due to the firm’s inability to prove any concrete injury. Chief U.S. District Judge, Nancy Rosenstengel, pointed out that MillerKing did not allege any loss of revenue or increased expenditures as a result of DoNotPay’s actions.
Rosenstengel continued that the firm had neither provided evidence of clients or potential clients withholding business due to any interaction with DoNotPay nor that anyone had hurt its reputation or lessened its goodwill. MillerKing’s attempt to present DoNotPay as a competitor that could poach potential clients was also dismissed due to the judge’s finding that the two parties offer very different services.
It is worth noting that a similar case, Faridian v. DoNotPay, remains under consideration in California, while a second California lawsuit, Lee v. DoNotPay, was voluntarily dismissed earlier this year.
Joshua Browder, DoNotPay’s founder, has lauded the dismissal of the MillerKing lawsuit as ‘an important precedent for the future of AI litigation’ in a LinkedIn post.
Browder further discussed several DoNotPay controversies in a past appearance on a LawNext podcast.
A more detailed version of the above proceedings can be found in the original LawNext article.