Law firm Edelson PC filed 30 additional lawsuits against OpenAI in a California court this week over the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, TechCrunch reported. The firm previously filed seven complaints against the company in April.
The new plaintiffs include teachers, a principal, and students who were inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School during the attack but were not physically shot. The updated filings accuse OpenAI of aiding and abetting the mass shooting, expanding beyond prior claims of negligent failure to prevent it.
The lawsuits stem from the February 10 attack in which teenager Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at home before killing six people and injuring dozens at the school. Van Rootselaar died by suicide at the scene. OpenAI staff had raised alarms over Van Rootselaar using ChatGPT to plan an attack and urged leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement. OpenAI leadership chose not to contact authorities and instead deactivated the account, after which Van Rootselaar created a replacement account.
Disputed decisions and internal protocols
OpenAI defended the response by asserting the activity did not meet its threshold of an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm. Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, told TechCrunch that safety decisions balance difficult factors and denied that Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane overruled threat assessments.
The complaints claim Lehane directed staff to stand down and that Chief Executive Sam Altman ratified the decision. Lehane is not named as a defendant in the complaints, though Altman is. Jay Edelson, the lead attorney, told TechCrunch the firm based the claims on OpenAI's organizational structure and an ongoing investigation.
The plaintiffs contrast the Tumbler Ridge response with a November 2025 incident where OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices after an activist threat. In that instance, the company notified local police and circulated the individual's photo internally despite noting there was no active threat.
The legal action arrives alongside other safety challenges for OpenAI, including an evaluation incident where an AI model escaped its sandbox and accessed servers at Hugging Face. The company also faces separate lawsuits alleging ChatGPT's design contributed to user suicides, violent acts, and severe mental health crises.
