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Attorney in trouble on ‘fake’ AI cases By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE Supreme Court has reported an attorney to the Bahamas Bar Council’s ethics committee after she submitted three “fake cases” generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to back her arguments. Justice Denise Lewis-Johnson, in an August 1, 2025, verdict said placing the “fictitious cases” before her “may very well amount to contempt of court” as she branded the predicament facing Darell Taylor “a warning” to the entire Bahamian legal profession over “how very dangerous” AI can be if not properly used. Ms Taylor, who is a former prosecutor with the Department of Public Prosecutions, according to Tribune Business research, admitted in an April 28, 2025, e-mail to Justice Lewis-Johnson that ChatGPT had been used to locate the three fake cases and rulings, and that the links to them could no longer be found. She asserted that there was “no restriction” on Bahamian attorneys using AI or ChatGPT, and doubled down by going “back to the poison
• Judge reports exprosecutor to Bar ethics committee • Case ‘warning’ on ‘how very dangerous’ AI could be • Went ‘back to poison well’ over non-existent verdict well” the very same day to argue that one of the three disputed cases - Kelly versus Rolle - was heard by the Court of Appeal on February 17, 2016. However, Justice Lewis-Johnson said it was impossible for one of the three Court of Appeal judges said to have heard that matter to have done so because he had retired almost three months previously. And the case number cited by Ms Taylor was assigned to another matter, Valentino Yustare versus the Crown. Rejecting Ms Taylor’s argument that the three “fake cases” were not
IMF: Bahamas can hit 90% US income level By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE Bahamas could grow its per capita income to 90 percent of US levels - the highest in the Caribbean - by eliminating the “misallocation” of capital, labour and other resources, an IMF paper is asserting. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in an August 8, 2005, working paper highlighting the gap between the region’s growth and productivity potential, and what exists today, argued that The Bahamas and its regional
counterparts are being held back by over-regulation, “the presence of state-owned enterprises” and other inefficiencies that undermine their competitiveness. Noting that The Bahamas’ real economic output declined by an annual average of around 2 percent between 2001 and 2023, when compared to its performance between 1980 and 2000, the report estimated that total factor productivity (TFP) would increase by 64 percent in this nation - the highest rise of all
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Abaco blasts BPL bill doubling amid outages By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net ABACO residents and businesses were yesterday said to have endured multiple power outages for several days, with several complaining bills have “doubled” amid worsening service and reliability. Roscoe Thompson, head of the Marsh Harbour/ Spring City Township, told Tribune Business that the problems have been especially “bad” in areas such as Marsh Harbour and
Treasure Cay with Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) confirming that 50 percent of the generation capacity at the island’s main Wilson City power plant is currently offline. With just one of the two offline generation units likely to return to operational service within the next ten days, and the other out of action until midSeptember, BPL said in a statement that a fault on one of its two remaining
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vital to her case, the judge said she had “wholly failed” in her duty as an attorney to ensure that all material placed before the Supreme Court is authentic and truthful. She added that the consequences of failing to verify the legitimacy of the AI-generated cases threatened to bring the Bahamian judicial system’s integrity into “disrepute”. Judge Lewis-Johnson said the matter “highlights the increasing use of AI” by the Bahamian legal profession, and how its misuse and failure to check and verify the data it produces can cause problems for the administration of justice. So-called ‘hallucinations’, created when an AI database produces fake information sources, have already undermined court cases in the US and Trinidad & Tobago. What is arguably the first AI ‘hallucination’ in the Bahamian legal system occurred after Ms Taylor brought an application on behalf of her client, Robert Phelps Herman, who is ensnared in a legal battle with his late wife’s children over probating her estate, which sought to have the latter’s claim dismissed over “procedural irregularities”.
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Gov’t told: ‘Don’t kill that goose’ of vacation rentals By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE Government is being urged not to “kill the goose” that enables Bahamians to own part of the country’s largest industry through an over-zealous crackdown on short-term vacation rentals. Bruce Raine, a longtime vacation rental owner and advocate who has now exited the business, told Tribune Business that “balance” is critical in the Department of Inland Revenue’s drive to push both Bahamian and foreign owners to register their properties via its portal. While the tax authorities are, for the minute at least, asserting there are no plans to tax Bahamian owners - just foreign ones, and particularly those that rent out second homes for thousands of dollars per week - many believe registration is just a precursor to imposing levies on locals. Mr Raine told this newspaper that the Department
of Inland Revenue needs to approach the short-term vacation rental market “slowly and gently”, arguing that while the Government was entitled to a share of the revenues this had to be set at “fair” and reasonable levels. Otherwise, it would receive significant “push back” and some Bahamian owners will exit the market due to the extra cost and regulation. Shunda Strachan, the Department of Inland Revenue’s acting controller, last week estimated that only 20 percent of existing short-term vacation rentals have complied with the need to register their properties with the tax authority. And, in addition, only 15 percent of the properties and owners who should be paying VAT to the Government are registered. She explained that this level of non-compliance, and suspected revenue leakage, sparked the Department of Inland Revenue’s recent issuance of letters to property owners
BALANCED - See Page B5