Expert Witness for 3M Used ChatGPT to Generate Report in $61 Million Explosion Lawsuit
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Discovery documents from a Houston lawsuit reveal an expert witness prompted ChatGPT to "show how 3M is 0% at fault" for a deadly 2020 manufacturing explosion.
An expert witness hired by 3M to testify in a $61 million lawsuit involving a deadly Houston explosion used ChatGPT to write significant portions of his report. The prompts, which became public during discovery, showed the witness explicitly asked the AI to help him "show how 3M is 0% at fault" for the incident. The details were first reported by 404 Media, which obtained court transcripts and deposition documents from the ongoing litigation. The case involves a 2020 explosion at the Watson Grinding facility. According to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the blast was caused by a degraded rubber welding hose that leaked flammable gas. The explosion killed three people and damaged 200 homes. 3M hired Josh Autenrieth of Knighthawk Engineering to prepare an expert report on the disaster. Autenrieth's rate was $475 per hour, and court records suggest 3M paid his firm roughly $90,000 for the analysis. ## Discovery of the Prompts
During discovery, plaintiff attorney Will Moye identified a "Citation Overlay" document that appeared to be generated by AI. Moye demanded all of Autenrieth's prompts. The resulting 350 pages of records revealed that Autenrieth provided ChatGPT with hundreds of court records and instructed the tool to "create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M."
The records included links to Autenrieth's full ChatGPT conversations. In these chats, Autenrieth asked the AI to help him find violations by other parties and to "defeat" the claims of opposing witnesses. He even uploaded an image of a gas detector, a central piece of evidence in the case, and asked the AI, "what am I looking at?"
The AI eventually produced a 30-page report. One draft included the sentence, "From a technical and standard-of-care standpoint, 3M is 0% responsible for the January 24, 2020 explosion."
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That specific phrase wasn't in the final report filed with the court. When Autenrieth asked ChatGPT to review the report as if it were the "opposing council," the AI warned him that claiming "0% responsible" would make him look like an advocate instead of an expert. In subsequent court transcripts, Autenrieth admitted that the submitted report was "90 to 85 percent ChatGPT." He claimed he used the tool to "draft a straw man to build off of" and that he altered outputs he didn't agree with. He also admitted to prompting the AI while sitting in traffic to "jog my memory" about gas detector manufacturers. ## The Trial Outcome
Moye took the unusual step of calling the defense's own expert to the stand to ensure the jury heard about the AI use. He argued that Autenrieth didn't use AI as an assistive device, but relied on it exclusively to form his opinions. The jury wasn't convinced by the defense's position. They awarded the plaintiffs more than $61 million. They found 3M responsible for 30 percent of the liability, while Watson Grinding was held 70 percent responsible. This is one of several cases related to the blast; previous decisions have resulted in awards of $118 million and $38 million. The case serves as a record that AI prompts used by experts are discoverable. While AI has been used in other international cases to generate evidence about weather patterns or biological infestations, this instance highlights how a major American corporation's defense relied on a biased automated tool. 3M, Knighthawk Engineering, and Autenrieth didn't respond to requests for comment.