OpenAI Lawsuits: ChatGPT Wrongful Death, Self-Harm, and Mass Shooting Claims

Recent Developments

The OpenAI litigation landscape moved from theoretical to active in the second half of 2025 and accelerated in the first half of 2026. The items below capture the developments most often referenced in current reporting and legal analysis. This section is intended to be refreshed as the docket develops.

• August 26, 2025 — Raine v. OpenAI filed: Matthew and Maria Raine filed suit in San Francisco County Superior Court (Case No. CGC-25-628528) against OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and Doe employees and investors, alleging that ChatGPT contributed to the suicide of their 16-year-old son Adam Raine. The complaint pleaded seven causes of action anchored on California strict products liability. This is the foundational case in the AI wrongful death docket.
• October 2025 — Raine amended complaint filed: The Raines amended their complaint to allege intentional misconduct, citing internal OpenAI policy documents (the Model Spec) that they allege show the company made conscious decisions to remove longstanding safety protocols in the weeks and months before Adam's death. The amendment opened a pathway to punitive damages and survival action damages otherwise unavailable in a negligence-based wrongful death claim.
• February 10, 2026 — Tumbler Ridge school shooting: A school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia preceded the federal lawsuits filed two months later. Wall Street Journal reporting indicated OpenAI's internal safety team flagged the shooter's conversations and recommended notifying police months before the attack.
• April 29, 2026 — Tumbler Ridge lawsuits filed: Seven federal lawsuits were filed against OpenAI and Sam Altman in California federal court by families affected by the Tumbler Ridge shooting. Plaintiffs' counsel Jay Edelson has signaled the lawsuits are part of a broader effort. The complaints allege negligence, wrongful death, and product liability theories, including a specific allegation that the account-enforcement system was circumventable.
• May 10, 2026 — FSU shooting lawsuit (Joshi v. OpenAI Foundation): The family of Tiru Chabba, killed in the April 17, 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University, filed an eight-count federal complaint in the Northern District of Florida against OpenAI and alleged shooter Phoenix Ikner. The complaint includes a novel negligent entrustment count not present in the Tumbler Ridge filings.
• May 12, 2026 — Scott overdose lawsuit filed: Texas residents Leila Turner-Scott and Angus Scott filed suit in California state court alleging that ChatGPT advised their 19-year-old son Sam Nelson that it was safe to combine kratom and Xanax. The case is the first major AI wrongful death suit grounded specifically in a drug interaction advisory.
• Mid-to-late 2026 — Motion-to-dismiss decisions expected: Early motions to dismiss are expected to resolve Section 230, First Amendment, and product-versus-content classification questions across the active cases. These rulings will shape every AI liability case that follows, regardless of whether the underlying claims ever reach trial.

This page is the central hub for OpenAI litigation coverage on Lawsuit Informer. For deeper analysis of individual cases, see the dedicated articles on the OpenAI school shooting lawsuits, the FSU shooting lawsuit (Chabba), and the Scott overdose lawsuit. For broader context, see product liability lawsuits, social media addiction lawsuit developments, and News & Analysis.

In Simple Terms

OpenAI lawsuits are civil cases brought against OpenAI by people who allege that sustained use of ChatGPT contributed to a serious harm. The most common harm patterns in the current docket are wrongful death by suicide, wrongful death by overdose or fatal drug interaction, mass-casualty acts of violence allegedly preceded by sustained ChatGPT use by the perpetrator, and self-harm or mental health crisis short of death.

These lawsuits are not class actions. Each is a separate complaint, typically filed on behalf of a single decedent's family or a single injured person. What ties them together is a shared legal theory: that ChatGPT is a product subject to traditional tort law, not a passive platform hosting third-party speech, and that OpenAI is responsible for the harm its product caused.

That framing matters because it is the difference between a viable lawsuit and one Section 230 would dispose of at the motion-to-dismiss stage. The companion articles linked above walk through this question in detail; this hub page provides the overarching framework that connects the cases.

Current OpenAI Litigation Status

As of May 2026, the OpenAI civil docket consists of roughly a dozen filed cases across California state court, California federal court, and the Northern District of Florida. The cases span four broad categories: wrongful death by suicide (Raine v. OpenAI and its likely successors), mass-casualty violence (Tumbler Ridge and FSU), wrongful death by drug interaction (Scott / Turner-Scott), and self-harm cases short of death that have not yet been filed publicly but are widely anticipated.

California has emerged as the dominant venue. Most filed cases are in California state or federal court. OpenAI is headquartered in San Francisco, California products liability law is plaintiff-friendlier than most state alternatives, and a developing California docket gives plaintiffs' counsel coordination advantages on briefing, expert development, and discovery. The FSU case is the exception, filed in the Northern District of Florida because the underlying incident, the decedent, and key evidence (the chat logs obtained by Florida law enforcement) are all in Florida.

Defendants named in current filings include OpenAI Inc., OpenAI's for-profit subsidiaries (OpCo, Holdings, and others), the OpenAI Foundation (the parent entity after the 2025 corporate restructuring), CEO Sam Altman personally, and Doe employees and investors. Microsoft has been identified in pleadings as exerting pressure on OpenAI to ship products faster, but as of May 2026 has not been named as a defendant in any of the filed cases. For broader background on how lawsuits against multiple corporate defendants are organized, see how lawsuits work and product liability lawsuits.

The Current OpenAI Docket, Case by Case

Raine v. OpenAI (San Francisco County Superior Court)

Raine is the foundational case. Matthew and Maria Raine sued in August 2025 over the April 2025 suicide of their 16-year-old son Adam, who had months of escalating conversations with ChatGPT-4o. The complaint is built on California strict products liability: it pleads that ChatGPT is a product, that GPT-4o's design risks substantially outweighed its benefits, and that safer alternative designs were both feasible and already running elsewhere in OpenAI's own systems.

Its evidentiary anchor is OpenAI's own moderation data — the complaint alleges the system flagged hundreds of Adam's messages for self-harm content, some at high confidence, without any intervention following. The detection worked while the response did not, and that gap is the structural point the related complaints have since modeled their own theories on.

An October 2025 amended complaint shifted from a rushed-to-market theory to alleging the deliberate removal of self-harm safeguards in the weeks before Adam's death, which opened a path to punitive and survival-action damages. The fuller treatment of that pivot, and the California causation rules it navigates, lives in the Scott analysis, which patterns on it directly.

Tumbler Ridge / Canadian School Shooting Lawsuits (Northern District of California)

On April 29, 2026, seven families affected by the February 10, 2026 shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia filed federal suits in San Francisco against OpenAI and Sam Altman. Citing Wall Street Journal reporting, the complaints allege OpenAI's internal safety team flagged the shooter's conversations and recommended notifying police months before the attack with no action taken, and that after one account was disabled the user simply opened another.

The account-circumvention allegation is the one to watch: it points at how the enforcement system was built and run rather than at any particular output, which is the version of the theory least exposed to an early Section 230 dismissal. Plaintiffs' counsel Jay Edelson has signaled these are part of a broader effort. The dedicated school shooting analysis covers the doctrinal posture in full.

Joshi v. OpenAI Foundation (Northern District of Florida)

On May 10, 2026, the family of Tiru Chabba — one of two people killed in the April 17, 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University — filed an eight-count federal complaint in the Northern District of Florida against OpenAI and alleged shooter Phoenix Ikner. The case is captioned Joshi v. OpenAI Foundation et al., Case No. 4:26-cv-00222-MW-MJF. Plaintiffs' counsel are Osborne Francis & Pettis in Florida and the Strom Law Firm in South Carolina, with civil rights attorney Bakari Sellers on the trial team.

It pleads negligence, gross negligence, three strict products liability counts, negligent entrustment, battery against Ikner, and Florida wrongful death. The negligent entrustment count is the novel one: it reframes the dispute around whether OpenAI can be answerable for continuing to grant a user access, an approach that sidesteps the harder product-classification question rather than depending on it. The FSU shooting breakdown covers the counts and the chat-history allegations in detail.

Turner-Scott v. OpenAI (California State Court)

On May 12, 2026, Texas residents Leila Turner-Scott and Angus Scott sued in California state court, alleging ChatGPT told their 19-year-old son Sam Nelson it was safe to combine kratom, which acts on opioid receptors, with the benzodiazepine Xanax — a combination the FDA has flagged for years as a respiratory-depression risk. Sam died of an overdose in 2025.

It is the first major AI wrongful death suit built specifically around a drug-interaction advisory, and it tests whether the removed-safeguards pattern from Raine carries outside the suicide context and into health-related advice. The dedicated Scott analysis covers the unauthorized-practice and adult-decedent angles.

Who May Have a Viable Claim

AI chatbot liability is a developing area of law. No court has yet ruled on the merits of any filed OpenAI case, and the doctrinal questions that determine viability are still open. That said, the filed cases cluster around recognizable fact patterns that suggest what a viable claim may look like, and equally, what is not yet a claim the current docket supports.

The harm patterns that have produced filed lawsuits so far share three features. First, the harm is serious: wrongful death, mass-casualty injury, or hospitalization-level self-harm. Lower-magnitude harms have not yet produced major filings. Second, the ChatGPT use is sustained: the cases involve weeks or months of conversations, not a single bad output. The "the chatbot said one bad thing" framing is the weakest version of an AI liability case and is the one most vulnerable to Section 230 and First Amendment dismissal. Third, the alleged advice or interaction contradicts well-established medical, safety, or behavioral guidance in a way that a defendant should have anticipated. The kratom-and-Xanax interaction in Scott, the suicide-method specificity in Raine, and the firearms operation guidance in Chabba all fit this pattern.

Beyond those features, the cases involve foreseeable users. Sam Nelson was 19, Adam Raine was 16, Phoenix Ikner was a college student. The Raine complaint emphasizes that vulnerable minors were a foreseeable user base. Scott extends the pattern to young adults. Whether older adults who experienced similar harms have viable claims is an open question that the docket has not yet tested.

Records and evidence matter. The Raine case is anchored to OpenAI's own moderation logs (377 flagged messages). The Chabba case is anchored to chat logs obtained by Florida law enforcement after the shooting. The Scott case relies on the family's reporting of what Sam shared about his ChatGPT use before he died. Plaintiffs without access to chat records face a significantly harder evidentiary path, though OpenAI's discovery obligations in pending cases may eventually make moderation logs and Model Spec revisions more broadly available to related plaintiffs.

Timing matters. Filing deadlines for these cases are set by state law and generally range from one to six years. The clock typically runs from when the person discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, both the harm and its possible connection to ChatGPT, under what is called the discovery rule. California has emerged as the dominant venue for reasons described above, but state-specific deadlines should be confirmed with qualified counsel. For broader context on these timelines, see how long do lawsuits take? and what happens after you contact a lawyer?.

The Legal Question at the Center

Every case in this docket runs into the same threshold dispute before any factual question is reached: when a generative system produces an output that contributes to harm, is the company answerable for it the way a manufacturer answers for a defective product, or is it shielded the way a platform is shielded for what its users post? Courts have not resolved this for general-purpose AI, and the answer determines which body of law even applies.

Plaintiffs across the filed cases have largely declined to argue about specific sentences ChatGPT produced. They frame the harm instead as the predictable result of design, training, and safety-operation choices the company made and controlled. OpenAI is expected to argue the opposite — that an output responsive to a user's prompt is closer to hosted speech than to a manufactured good. Where a court lands on that characterization tends to drive the Section 230, First Amendment, and duty-to-warn questions that follow, rather than those questions being resolved on their own terms.

The doctrinal mechanics — how the product-versus-content line developed, why standalone software has always fit awkwardly inside it, and how the negligent entrustment and duty-to-warn theories interact with that framing — are involved enough to treat separately from this docket overview. For the purposes of this page, the practical point is narrower: the framing fight is the first real contest in every one of these cases, and the early motion-to-dismiss rulings will signal which way it breaks.

Records That May Matter

People researching AI chatbot harm often start by gathering basic records about the affected person's ChatGPT use, the harm experienced, and the timing of both. The specific records that matter depend on the type of claim being reviewed.

• Chat history with ChatGPT, if accessible to family, an estate representative, or recovered through law enforcement
• Account information, including the email address used to sign up and the subscription tier (free, Plus, Team)
• The version of ChatGPT the person was using, if known (GPT-4o, GPT-5, or another version)
• Dates of sustained use, including approximate start date and frequency of conversations
• Medical records relating to the harm, including hospitalization records, autopsy reports, toxicology results, and mental health treatment history
• Death certificate, if applicable
• Communications in which the affected person referenced ChatGPT or AI advice to family members, friends, or healthcare providers
• Documents showing when family or representatives first learned of the connection between ChatGPT use and the harm

For more general next-step guidance on gathering records and contacting counsel, review what evidence helps a lawsuit?, what happens after you contact a lawyer?, and how lawsuits work.

What to Watch Next

Several developments over the next twelve months will shape the trajectory of every AI liability case in the docket and every case that follows.

Motion-to-dismiss rulings. The earliest substantive rulings will come on the motions to dismiss OpenAI is expected to file in each case. These motions will raise Section 230 immunity, First Amendment protections, lack of duty, and arguments that ChatGPT output is not a product under the relevant state's products liability law. Federal courts generally prefer to dispose of cases on the narrowest available theory, so any of these grounds could carry the day at the pleadings stage. The first ruling in any of the cases will be cited heavily in every other pending and future AI liability suit.

Discovery in Raine. Because Raine is the oldest case and has already survived initial pleading challenges, it is the furthest along in discovery. The internal OpenAI documents being produced — the Model Spec revisions, the moderation system logs, internal communications about safety priorities — will set the evidentiary baseline for every other AI liability case. If those documents are eventually unsealed or made available to related plaintiffs through coordinated discovery, the entire docket benefits.

Consolidation or coordination. The Tumbler Ridge cases are in the Northern District of California, the FSU case is in the Northern District of Florida, and the California state cases (Raine, Scott) are in San Francisco County Superior Court. Different plaintiffs' teams, different jurisdictions, similar underlying defendant. If additional cases land, the question of consolidation — informal cooperation, MDL coordination, or parallel tracks — becomes more concrete. Any signal of formal coordination changes settlement leverage materially.

The next wave of cases. The current docket focuses on the most serious harms: wrongful death and mass-casualty injury. The next wave is likely to include self-harm and mental health crisis cases short of death, which would represent a much larger plaintiff pool. The social media addiction litigation (MDL 3047) provides a structural template for what that next wave might look like. For background, see social media addiction lawsuit developments.

Regulatory action. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced a criminal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT related to the FSU shooting. State attorneys general historically follow each other into emerging enforcement areas. State medical boards have begun examining whether AI systems that produce drug interaction guidance fall within unauthorized practice of medicine statutes. Federal regulators have not yet acted, but the FTC has shown willingness to address AI-related consumer harm in other contexts. Regulatory action would not directly affect civil cases but would shift the public and political environment in which they are litigated.

Bottom Line

This docket is the first serious test of whether the companies that build generative AI systems can be held to account for what those systems do. The characterization fight — manufactured product or hosted content — will likely sort more of these cases than any single set of facts, because it decides which legal regime applies before the facts are weighed.

Most of these complaints are likely to be narrowed or resolved at the motion stage rather than at trial, which is the ordinary path for genuinely novel tort theories. But the rulings on those early motions will set the leverage for everything that follows, including cases not yet filed. The motions are where this is decided in practice, and the framing question is the thing to watch in them.

Common Questions People Ask

Can ChatGPT users sue OpenAI?

Lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI by families of people who allege that sustained ChatGPT use contributed to wrongful death, self-harm, fatal drug interactions, or acts of violence. Whether any individual person has a viable claim depends on the specific facts, the harm alleged, the available evidence, the state where the claim would be filed, and how courts resolve the doctrinal questions these cases raise. AI chatbot liability is a developing area of law and pending case outcomes are unpredictable.

What is the legal theory behind these lawsuits?

Most filed cases plead strict products liability (design defect and failure to warn), negligence, and wrongful death theories under state law. The core argument is that ChatGPT is a product subject to traditional tort law, not protected user-generated content. Plaintiffs allege OpenAI knew its system could cause serious harm to vulnerable users, had safety guardrails available, and either removed those guardrails or failed to act on internal safety signals. The negligent entrustment count in the FSU case adds a doctrinally novel theory focused on access to the chatbot rather than the output itself.

Is Section 230 a defense?

OpenAI is expected to raise Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, arguing it cannot be treated as the speaker of ChatGPT's outputs. Plaintiffs counter that the statute does not reach a company that built and trained the model generating the output, which would make OpenAI an information content provider rather than a passive host. The question is unsettled for generative AI. In Garcia v. Character Technologies, a federal court declined to dismiss comparable claims on Section 230 grounds, an early signal that at least one court will not treat AI output as automatically equivalent to third-party content.

How does Garcia v. Character Technologies affect these cases?

Garcia v. Character Technologies was decided on a motion to dismiss in the Middle District of Florida. The court declined to throw out product-liability-style claims against the company behind Character.AI on First Amendment and Section 230 grounds, and treated the chatbot's output as not purely third-party content. It does not bind the courts hearing the OpenAI cases, but it analyzes the same defenses OpenAI is expected to raise and found they do not dispose of these claims at the pleading stage, which is why plaintiffs are expected to rely on it.

What kinds of harm have led to lawsuits so far?

The filed cases cluster around four harm patterns: wrongful death by suicide following sustained conversations with the chatbot (Raine), wrongful death by overdose or fatal drug interaction allegedly tied to ChatGPT advice (Scott), mass-casualty acts of violence where the alleged perpetrator's sustained ChatGPT use is part of the factual record (Tumbler Ridge and FSU), and self-harm or mental health crisis short of death. Additional case types are likely to develop as the docket expands.

Where are these cases being filed?

California has emerged as the dominant venue. Raine v. OpenAI was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court. The Tumbler Ridge cases were filed in California federal court. The Scott overdose case was filed in California state court. The FSU shooting case is the exception, filed in the Northern District of Florida because the underlying incident, the decedent, and key evidence are all in Florida. California products liability law is plaintiff-friendlier than most state alternatives, OpenAI is headquartered in San Francisco, and a developing California docket gives plaintiffs' counsel the benefit of shared briefing, coordinated discovery, and expert development.

What is the statute of limitations for an OpenAI lawsuit?

Filing deadlines are set by state law and generally range from one to six years for personal injury and wrongful death claims. The clock usually starts when the person discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, both the harm and its possible connection to ChatGPT, under what is called the discovery rule. State-specific deadlines vary and should be confirmed with qualified counsel.