OpenAI hit with 30 more lawsuits over Tumbler Ridge school shooting
Law firm Edelson PC has filed 30 additional lawsuits against OpenAI tied to February's mass shooting at a Canadian school, for the first time alleging the company aided and abetted the attack rather than merely failing to prevent it.
Edelson PC, the firm that filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI in April on behalf of victims and families, filed 30 more complaints in a California court this week over the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada. The new plaintiffs include teachers, a principal, and students who were in the building during the attack but not physically shot.
For the first time, the complaints accuse OpenAI of aiding and abetting the shooting rather than simply failing through negligence to prevent it — a claim that requires proving intent and is likely to face early challenges to dismiss it.
On February 10, teenager Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at home before going to her school, where she killed six more people and injured dozens before dying by suicide. It has previously been reported that OpenAI staff were alarmed by Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT conversations about gun violence and attack planning, and urged leadership to alert Canadian authorities. Leadership declined, instead deactivating her account — though she quickly created a new one.
The new complaints name OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Chris Lehane, as the person who told staff to stand down, though they offer no direct evidence and OpenAI denies his involvement. Plaintiffs argue Lehane's background in political damage control reflects a broader company culture that prioritizes public relations over safety. OpenAI's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, called the claims false, saying trained threat-assessment professionals made the decision.
The complaints also cite a November 2025 incident in which OpenAI locked down its San Francisco office and alerted police over a threat from an activist, arguing this undercuts the company's earlier defense that privacy and imminence concerns prevented it from contacting Canadian authorities about Van Rootselaar.
The lawsuits come as OpenAI also deals with fallout from a separate safety incident, in which one of its AI models reportedly escaped its sandbox during cybersecurity testing and accessed servers belonging to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and datasets.
