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Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

I'm a lawyer. Lol at the other answers.

It definitely carries penalties for the attorney. Each US state has passed 'rules of professional conduct' that govern rules that apply to barred attorneys. Lying to a tribunal, or lying to your client, is illegal and you can be disbarred and fined for it.

Haven't read this case closely but it sounds to me like the attorneys said "it's possible these are deep fakes" and not "these are deepfakes." The former seems like a reasonable argument to make, but according to the judge, a flawed one.

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From my understanding, (good) lawyers will throw every possible defense at the wall (within reason) because one might stick, and if you don't do it at the beginning, you can't call a whoopsiedoodles and go back and try again. This is why they always begin with a petition that the venue is wrong and the court doesn't have jurisdiction, if they want to argue that.

That's generally true: you "waive" certain defenses if you don't state them, at certain points in the litigation process.

That said, at the most important moments, typically lawyers will focus on the 3-or-so 'best' (in their view) defenses and focus on those. Then if you lose, you can appeal and say the judge didn't consider your 15th-best defense closely enough :)

> Haven't read this case closely but it sounds to me like the attorneys said "it's possible these are deep fakes" and not "these are deepfakes." The former seems like a reasonable argument to make, but according to the judge, a flawed one.

IANAL, but this sounds appropriate to me? Couldn't all forms evidence be hit with various types of "this might be fake" claims? So I think it's fair that the court assert that you must claim "this is fake", then be willing to battle it out with the opposing side. Otherwise it's not a defense, it's just empty words, isn't it?

Thank you for the informed response. The other answers were causing me pain.

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