An insolvency judge in England tossed out testimony after discovering a witness was being coached on what to say in real time through a pair of smartglasses. When the voice of the coach started coming through the cellphone after it was disconnected from the glasses, the witness blamed the whole thing on ChatGPT.
Insolvency and Companies Court (ICC) Judge Agnello KC in Britain wrote up the incident after it happened in January and the UK-based legal research blog Legal Futures was first to report it. The case considered the liquidation of a Lithuanian company co-owned by a man named Laimonas Jakštys. Jakštys was in court to get his business off an insolvency list and to put himself back in charge of it. It didn’t go well.
“Right at the start of his cross examination, he seemed to pause quite a bit before replying to the questions being asked,” Judge Agnello wrote. “These questions were interpreted and then there was a pause before there was a reply. After several questions, [defense lawyer Sarah Walker] then informed me that she could hear an interference coming from around Mr. Jakštys and asked if Mr. Jakštys could take his glasses off for a period as she was aware smart glasses existed.”
There was a Lithuanian interpreter on hand to help Jakštys talk to the court and she, too, said she could hear voices from Jakštys’s glasses. The judge pointed out they were smart glasses and asked him to take them off. “After a few further questions, when the interpreter was in the process of translating a question, Mr Jakštys’ mobile phone started broadcasting out loud with the voice of someone talking,” Judge Agnello wrote. “There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Mr. Jakštys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket. At my direction, the smart glasses and his mobile were placed into the hands of his solicitor.”
Jakštys showed up the next day in the glasses again and the judge told him to turn them off. “Jakštys denied that he was using the smart glasses to receive the answers that he was to give in court to the questions being asked,” the judgement said. “He also denied that his smart glasses were linked to his mobile phone at the time that he was giving evidence before me.”
During the court appearance, Jakštys claimed his mobile phone had been stolen but couldn’t provide a police report for the incident. He also repeatedly received calls on his smartglasses-connected phone from a number listed as “abra kadabra.” The call log showed that many of the calls occurred when he was on the witness stand. The judge asked him about the identity of “abra kadabra” and Jakštys said it was a taxi driver.
“When he was pressed as to why all these calls were made…Mr. Jakštys stated that he was not able to remember. This was a reply which he also gave frequently during his evidence,” Judge Agnello said.
In the end, the Judge tossed out all of Jakštys’ testimony. “He was untruthful in relation to his use about the smart glasses and in being coached through the smart glasses,” the judgement said. “In my judgment, from what occurred in court, it is clear that call was made, connected to his smart glasses and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him. When asked about this, his explanation was that he thought it was ChatGPT which caused the voice to be heard from his mobile phone once his smart glasses had been removed. That lacks any credibility.”
This incident in the London court is just another in a long line of bad behavior from people wearing smartglasses. CBP agents have been spotted wearing them during immigration raids and Harvard students have loaded them with facial recognition tech to instantly dox strangers.
