30 more lawsuits over Tumbler Ridge school shooting

Lawyers at Edelson PC are filing 30 new lawsuits against OpenAI in U.S. federal court in California over the Feb. 10 school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. More victims are suing over the company's failure to alert police about ChatGPT interactions with the suspect months before the attack, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At a glance

• The new plaintiffs include educators, a principal and students, among them siblings who were separated during the attack that killed eight people, six of them children, along with the 18-year-old shooter.
• The complaints allege OpenAI's safety staff repeatedly asked to notify authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT activity eight months before the shooting, and that head of global affairs Chris Lehane overruled them.
• Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon called that account absolutely false on X, saying Lehane had no role in the original referral decision and that OpenAI's investigators do not report to him.

The litigation reads as an early test of whether a general-purpose chatbot provider can be held liable for what its systems saw and its staff did not report. OpenAI's own account, that the activity fell below the threshold for a police referral, puts the design of that threshold at the center of the dispute. The demand for mandatory reporting duties would likely reshape how every major model provider handles signals of imminent violence.

Thirty new complaints join seven cases filed by victims' families in April

Edelson PC, a U.S. firm specializing in class actions, said the 30 suits are being filed in federal court in California, where OpenAI is headquartered and where seven cases brought by victims' families in April are already pending. The new plaintiffs include teachers, a principal and students.

The Feb. 10 attack in northern British Columbia killed eight people, six of them children, along with the 18-year-old shooter. One of the new filings says survivors are "living with physical and psychological injuries that will never fully heal". The claims allege negligence, breaches of product-liability standards and aiding and abetting the massacre.

The complaints also say OpenAI moved to secure its own offices after learning of threats to employees three months before the shooting, and accuse the company of "choosing profit over the lives of the children of Tumbler Ridge" as it prepares for a public listing.

OpenAI banned Van Rootselaar's account in June 2025 without referring it to police

The company has acknowledged banning Van Rootselaar's account in June 2025 and said the activity did not meet the "higher threshold required" to refer it to police at the time. The lawsuits allege that safety staff repeatedly pushed to notify authorities about activity that included planning violent scenarios, and that those appeals were overruled by Lehane.

Kwon wrote on X that he thinks of the tragedy daily and that OpenAI teams "work hard to define standards and processes for when to report cases to law enforcement", applying them while protecting the privacy of more than one billion users of its tools.

He said it is "absolutely false" that Lehane was involved in the original referral decision or that investigators report to him, and rejected the claim that political or public relations factors shaped the decisions. Sam Altman apologized to the Tumbler Ridge community in April in a letter and said the company has updated its protocols.

Edelson wants Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT logs made public

Jay Edelson, chief executive of Edelson PC, told CBC's Daybreak South that one aim of the suits is to have Van Rootselaar's ChatGPT logs released. He said OpenAI has refused calls to publish them, and that it would have done so if the contents helped its case.

John Rice of Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott, Canadian co-counsel, said the plaintiffs also want internal documents showing why Canadian authorities were not alerted. They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages he described as historic. Rice said the goal includes reforming platform safety with mandatory law enforcement reporting for "all foreseeable and imminent acts of violence".

The province's own claim against OpenAI

The B.C. government has said it plans its own legal action against OpenAI, and no filing date has been made public. The former Tumbler Ridge Secondary School was demolished in August, and the federal government announced $4 million in new support funding for the community.

Maya Gebala, the 12-year-old who was shot in the head and survived, is part of the April filings and is relearning to speak. Her mother, Cia Edmonds, posted a video on Facebook showing her saying "mom" into the camera before cracking a smile.