30 lawsuits against OpenAI over Tumbler Ridge school shooting filed in California

Lawyers for survivors of the Feb. 10 Tumbler Ridge shooting have filed 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI in U.S. federal court, alleging the company ignored its own safety staff.

Survivors and educators join wave of litigation against OpenAI over Tumbler Ridge attack

Lawyers representing victims and survivors of the Tumbler Ridge school shooting have filed 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI in U.S. federal court in California, nytimes.com reports. The new plaintiffs include educators, a principal, and students — among them siblings who were separated during the February 10 attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in northern British Columbia.

The shooting left eight people dead, including six children, along with the 18-year-old gunman, Jesse Van Rootselaar.

The suits were filed by Edelson PC, a U.S. firm specializing in class actions, in California, where OpenAI is headquartered and where seven earlier cases against the company — brought by families of victims — are already pending.

Safety team overruled, lawsuits allege

According to Edelson PC, OpenAI's internal safety team repeatedly requested that authorities be notified about Van Rootselaar's activity on ChatGPT as early as eight months before the attack. That activity allegedly included the planning of violent scenarios.

The lawsuits claim those requests were overruled by Chris Lehane, OpenAI's head of global affairs. OpenAI's leadership, they allege, "ignored its own safety staff and refused to alert police," while simultaneously moving to protect its own offices after learning of threats to employees — three months before the Tumbler Ridge shooting.

The complaints accuse OpenAI of "choosing profit over the lives of the children of Tumbler Ridge" as the company prepares for a public stock offering.

"The survivors — students, teachers, and parents alike — are living with physical and psychological injuries that will never fully heal," one lawsuit states.

OpenAI pushes back on specific allegations

Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer at OpenAI, responded to the new claims in a post on X. He said he thinks of the Tumbler Ridge tragedy daily and that the company's teams "work hard to define standards and processes for when to report cases to law enforcement."

"They work continuously to identify potential warning signals of serious violence, while also protecting the privacy and security of the vast majority of the more than one billion users who use our tools responsibly," Kwon wrote.

Kwon called it frustrating to see what he described as false claims targeting his teams. He said it is "absolutely false to say Chris Lehane was involved with our original referral decision, or that our investigators report to him in any way." He also rejected the suggestion that safety decisions were influenced by political or public relations considerations.

OpenAI has previously acknowledged banning Van Rootselaar's account in June 2025, but said his activity at the time did not meet the "higher threshold required" to refer the matter to police.

Chat logs and internal documents sought

Jay Edelson, CEO of Edelson PC, told CBC's Daybreak South that one goal of the litigation is to compel the release of Van Rootselaar's chat logs with ChatGPT. He said OpenAI has so far refused calls to make those records public — a refusal he interprets as significant.

"If, in anyway, it helped them they would do that," Edelson said.

John Rice, of Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott and Canadian co-counsel for the suits, said the complainants also want access to internal OpenAI documents that could explain why Canadian authorities were never alerted about Van Rootselaar's plans.

Rice said the families are pursuing compensatory and punitive damages to penalize OpenAI — if the allegations are proven — and "to express society's condemnation and outrage over such egregious corporate malfeasance." He added that the suits aim to help prevent future AI-facilitated mass shootings by reforming platform safety standards, including mandatory law enforcement reporting for "all foreseeable and imminent acts of violence."

Survivor's recovery, broader fallout

Among those named in the earlier round of lawsuits is the family of Maya Gebala, a 12-year-old student who was shot in the head and survived. Her mother, Cia Edmonds, shared a video on Facebook this week showing Maya relearning to speak, saying "mom" into the camera before breaking into a smile.

"Tears of awe as I watch her crawl out of the rubble that her mind lives in," Edmonds wrote. "One step at a time. She shows me, more and more what miracles look like."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community and said the company has updated its protocols. The British Columbia government has also announced plans to pursue legal action against OpenAI. The site of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School has since been demolished.

Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)