{"id":637522,"date":"2026-04-30T01:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637522\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:17:17","slug":"tumbler-ridge-b-c-lawsuits-filed-in-california-court-against-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/637522\/","title":{"rendered":"Tumbler Ridge, B.C. lawsuits filed in California court against OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven families impacted by the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooting<\/a> in February filed lawsuits against OpenAI and its founder, Sam Altman, in a San Francisco court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

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Eight people were killed when 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire at a school in Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n

A cross-border legal team is pursuing action against OpenAI and Altman. Seven lawsuits have been filed on behalf of five murder victims and two who were injured.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese families from the Canadian north have come together and they\u2019ve decided to pursue litigation in the United States on a scale that can hold these companies to account,\u201d Vancouver-based lawyer John Rice with Rice Parsons Leoni & Elliott LLP, told Global News.<\/p>\n

The claims, which have not been tested in court, state that in the weeks that followed the attack in Tumbler Ridge, \u201ca sickening truth emerged: ChatGPT played a role in the mass shooting and OpenAI could have, and should have, prevented it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In February, OpenAI confirmed that an account connected with Van Rootelsar<\/a> was identified the previous June and was subsequently banned for violating the usage policy.<\/p>\n

The company considered referring the account to law enforcement but determined the account activity did not meet the threshold for referring a user to law enforcement because it did not involve an imminent and credible risk or planning of serious physical harm to others.<\/p>\n

In a statement in February, RCMP Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said the platform did reach out to the RCMP after the shooting.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSam Altman and his leadership team knew what silence meant for the citizens of Tumbler Ridge,\u201d the lawsuits state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were focused on what disclosure meant for themselves. Warning the RCMP would set a precedent: OpenAI would be compelled to notify authorities every time its safety team identified a user planning real-world violence.<\/p>\n

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\u201cGiven the volume of chat-induced violence on ChatGPT, that would require a dedicated law-enforcement referral team tasked with reporting OpenAI\u2019s own users to authorities. And the public would finally see what OpenAI was desperately trying to hide: that ChatGPT is not the safe, essential tool the company sells it as, but a product dangerous enough that its makers routinely identify its users as threats to human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suits make several claims of negligence, product liability and violation of California\u2019s business and professional code.<\/p>\n

Chicago lawyer Jay Edelson, with Edelson PC, and Vancouver lawyer Rice met with families in Tumbler Ridge before filing the suit in California, where OpenAI is based.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe spent the last two days meeting with the victims of the Tumbler Ridge shooting,\u201d Edelson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been some of the most difficult days of our professional lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuits claim OpenAI\u2019s safety team urged leadership to notify the RCMP but for OpenAI, \u201cthis was a question of corporate survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to Global News, a spokesperson for OpenAI said \u201cthe events in Tumbler Ridge are a tragedy\u201d and stressed it has worked to increase safeguards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a zero-tolerance policy for using our tools to assist in committing violence,\u201d the spokesperson wrote in an email. \u201cAs we shared with Canadian officials, we have already strengthened our safeguards, including improving how ChatGPT responds to signs of distress, connecting people with local support and mental health resources, strengthening how we assess and escalate potential threats of violence, and improving detection of repeat policy violators.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to Reuters, OpenAI is laying\u00a0the groundwork \u200bfor an initial public offering that could value it up to US$1 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Edelson added that they will be asking the jury to \u201csend a strong message to Open AI that it can\u2019t make a decision to put profits over the lives of little kids and it\u2019s hard to imagine that we won\u2019t ask for at least a billion dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The lawsuits likened OpenAI\u2019s decision not to notify RCMP to Ford\u2019s decision in the 1970s to keep selling the Pinto after its engineers warned that the fuel tank design would cause people to burn to death in rear-end collisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tragedy was not just predictable, it was preventable,\u201d Rice said.<\/p>\n

The suits claim \u201ccompany leaders overruled the safety team members,\u201d \u201cdeactivated the Shooter\u2019s account, and kept what they had seen to themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen the story eventually broke, Altman and OpenAI lied. First they claimed to have \u2018banned\u2019 the Shooter\u2019s account.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the lawsuits claim that OpenAI does not ban users. \u201cIt only \u2018deactivates\u2019 them \u2013 a process that can be reversed within minutes by registering a new account. The Shooter did exactly that, and continued using ChatGPT to plan the attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we see the chats, I am very convinced that you\u2019re going to see that ChatGPT wasn\u2019t just listening to the shooter but actively pushing the shooter into this mindset,\u201d Edelson said.<\/p>\n

The lawsuits claim that OpenAI already had \u201cclear knowledge\u201d that people were using its product to plan and prepare real-world violence.<\/p>\n

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They cite a case that happened in January 2025, when a man used ChatGPT for feedback on how to use explosives<\/a> and evade surveillance before detonating a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

They also use another example, a case from April 2025, in which a 20-year-old gunman carried out a mass shooting at Florida State University. Chat logs showed that the gunman had used ChatGPT \u201cextensively\u201d<\/a> in the lead-up and during the attack and the gunman had asked questions about how to fire a shotgun, the legal fates of school shooters and when the student union would be busiest, according to the lawsuits.<\/p>\n

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The suits also reference an incident that happened in May 2025, in which a teen boy in Finland used ChatGPT for nearly four months to help prepare for an attack<\/a> in which he stabbed three 14-year-old girls at his school, according to the lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Finnish authorities reported that the boy had made hundreds of chatbot queries, including research into stabbing tactics, concealment of evidence and information on mass killings.<\/p>\n

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Some legal action was initially started in Canada, then severed to pursue litigation stateside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of expressing society\u2019s condemnation, deterring corporate malfeasance, a Canadian court can\u2019t do that for a company of this size,\u201d Rice explained.<\/p>\n

The MP for Prince George \u2013 Peace River, Bob Zimmer, said on Wednesday that the families of Tumbler Ridge \u201cdeserved answers and deserved restitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Evan Solomon, Canada\u2019s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, said on Wednesday morning that the federal government is also doing its part to make sure citizens are protected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why the AI Safety Institute is currently, as I said, working with OpenAI to assess their safety protocols and as I said, all options are on the table when we come back on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Solomon added that he and Marc Miller, Canada\u2019s Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, are looking at all options, including how to regulate online harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to understand exactly what these companies are doing with these new technologies on AI chatbots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we are looking very closely. We know there\u2019s been a series of legislations that did not pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solomon said that he will be tabling legislation on privacy very soon, but did not provide specifics.<\/p>\n

On April 24, Altman issued an apology letter to Tumbler Ridge<\/a>, saying he is \u201cdeeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and (irreversible) loss your community has suffered.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Twelve-year-old Maya Gebala was shot three times at close range in the library of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.<\/p>\n

She has been fighting for her life in the hospital ever since.<\/p>\n

In response to that apology letter, Gebala\u2019s mother, Cia, released a statement saying in part, \u201cto think, a simple phone call could have prevented this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTumbler Ridge sees your \u2018apology\u2019, Sam. We do not accept it.\u201d<\/p>\n

All seven lawsuits request jury trials, which the legal team expects will move forward next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven families impacted by the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooting in February filed lawsuits against OpenAI and its founder,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,190488,190601,2845],"class_list":["post-637522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-tumbler-ridge","tag-tumbler-ridge-school-shooting","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}