OpenAI’s Silence Is Now at the Center of 30 More Tumbler Ridge Lawsuits

OpenAI’s Silence Is Now at the Center of 30 More Tumbler Ridge Lawsuits
The legal fight over the Tumbler Ridge school shooting widened this week as survivors filed 30 additional lawsuits against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in California federal court. The plaintiffs include students, teachers and the school’s principal—people who were inside the building during the February 10 attack but were not physically shot.

The complaints trace back to June 2025, when OpenAI shut down Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account after an automated system found a policy violation. Eight months later, authorities say Van Rootselaar killed her mother and younger brother at home, then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed five students and an educational assistant before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Earlier lawsuits accused OpenAI of negligently failing to prevent the attack. The new filings go further, alleging the company “provided substantial assistance and encouragement” by failing to notify Canadian authorities and by allowing the shooter to regain access after her account was deactivated rather than system-wide banned.

Plaintiffs say internal safety staff had urged OpenAI to contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, only to be overruled by company leadership. They specifically allege that Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane, or someone in his chain of command, halted the referral—a claim the complaints acknowledge is based on “information and belief,” not direct evidence.

OpenAI rejects the premise. Ann M. O’Leary, its vice president of global policy, wrote that the company did not identify “credible and imminent planning” that met its threshold for going to law enforcement. Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon has also called claims that safety decisions were driven by political or public-relations concerns “completely untrue.”

The cases now turn that judgment into the central question: whether OpenAI’s threshold for intervening was a defensible safeguard—or a warning missed before it was too late.

Continue reading https://foxvector.com/stories/01a074cb-6d5f-3e8d-71f0-2bfdcc67e3fc