Key takeaways
- Law firm Edelson PC filed 30 new complaints against OpenAI over the Tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooting in British Columbia, expanding an initial set of seven lawsuits filed in April.
- The new complaints accuse OpenAI of actively aiding and abetting the attack, a higher legal threshold than negligence that requires proving intent from the company.
- Complaints allege Chris Lehane, OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer, overruled threat assessment professionals and ordered staff not to alert Canadian authorities about the shooter.
- Complaints cite a November 2025 incident when OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices and alerted police over an activist threat, arguing the company applied different safety standards for protecting employees versus handling user-generated risks.
OpenAI confronts a widening legal challenge stemming from the February 10 shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, Canada. Law firm Edelson PC, which filed seven lawsuits against the company in April on behalf of victims and families affected by the attack, is filing 30 additional complaints this week. The new lawsuits expand the plaintiff base to include teachers, a principal, and students who were present in the building during the shooting but were not themselves injured.
The expanded legal action introduces a more serious allegation than the initial complaints. Instead of claiming OpenAI was negligent in failing to prevent the shooting, the new complaints accuse the company of actively aiding and abetting the attack. This legal threshold requires proving intent on OpenAI’s part and is expected to face early dismissal motions in court.
The Shooter’s ChatGPT Activity
The claims center on how OpenAI handled information about Jesse Van Rootselaar in the months before the attack. Van Rootselaar, a teenager, killed her mother and half-brother at home on February 10, then traveled to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed six more people and injured dozens before dying by suicide. According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI staff had flagged Van Rootselaar’s use of ChatGPT, which included conversations about gun violence and discussions about planning an attack.
The Decision Not to Alert Authorities
Staff Warnings Ignored
OpenAI’s threat assessment team voiced serious concerns about Van Rootselaar’s potential for real-world harm. Employees who reviewed the account urged the company’s leadership to alert Canadian law enforcement about the risk she posed. The company instead chose a different path: staff deactivated Van Rootselaar’s account, but she created a new one shortly afterward. OpenAI never contacted authorities.
The Imminent Risk Defense
The company has since defended this decision, explaining that Van Rootselaar’s activity did not cross the internal threshold of an “imminent and credible risk” of serious physical harm needed to justify notifying law enforcement. Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer who oversees the team of human reviewers and the company’s legal department, restated this position to TechCrunch.
“That judgment is not infallible, but it is always rooted in looking out for this balance for people,” Kwon said in a statement. He emphasized that the company prioritizes both individual safety and broader concerns when making such decisions.
New Focus on Chris Lehane
The Allegations
The new complaints single out Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, as the person who instructed staff not to contact authorities. Lehane has extensive experience in political crisis management, having worked in that capacity for the Clinton administration and later for Airbnb before joining OpenAI. The complaints do not provide direct evidence of his involvement in this specific decision, and OpenAI has denied his involvement entirely.
The plaintiffs argue that Lehane’s background in public relations and damage control has shaped a corporate culture at OpenAI that prioritizes managing public perception over prioritizing safety measures. One complaint states: “The Intelligence and Investigations Team—the only team inside OpenAI responsible for identifying ChatGPT users who pose a threat of real-world violence—was placed under [Lehane’s] control.” The allegation continues that because of this reporting structure, the decision to contact law enforcement fell not to trained threat-assessment professionals but instead to Lehane or someone in his chain of command, with approval from CEO Sam Altman.
OpenAI’s Defense
Jay Edelson, the lead attorney on the cases, told TechCrunch that the legal team is basing these allegations partly on OpenAI’s organizational chart and partly on broader investigation into how Lehane operates within the company. “We are not laying out all of our evidence at this point,” Edelson said, noting that Lehane and Altman will serve as “critical witnesses” alongside the safety team.
Kwon strongly rejected the allegations. “It is absolutely false to say Chris Lehane was involved with our original referral decision, or that our investigators report to him in any way,” he stated. “It’s also completely untrue to say that the people at the center of these challenging decisions do not prioritize safety, or that there are ‘political’ or ‘public relations’ factors at play.”
Notably, Lehane is not named as a defendant in the complaints, though Altman is listed alongside OpenAI as a defendant, continuing from the initial seven lawsuits.
The Inconsistency: November Lockdown
Different Standards Applied
The new complaints highlight what they characterize as an inconsistency in how OpenAI applied its own safety standards. In November 2025, approximately three months before the Tumbler Ridge shooting, OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices following an alleged threat from an activist. The company acknowledged at the time that there was “no indication of active threat activity”—meaning by its own definition, there was no imminent threat. Yet OpenAI’s response was immediate and comprehensive: the company locked down facilities, warned employees, distributed the suspect’s name and photograph to staff, and notified the San Francisco Police Department.
The complaints use this incident to argue that when OpenAI’s own employees were at risk, neither privacy concerns nor the requirement of an imminent threat prevented the company from alerting police. “When its own people were at risk, no ‘privacy’ interest stopped OpenAI from notifying the police or circulating the man’s name and photograph to thousands of employees. Nor did it wait for the attack to become imminent because it recognized that waiting would jeopardize employee safety,” the complaint reads.
Broader Safety Controversies
The Tumbler Ridge lawsuits arrive against a backdrop of other safety controversies at OpenAI. The company recently disclosed that one of its AI models escaped its sandbox environment during cybersecurity evaluations and successfully hacked into the servers of Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and datasets. OpenAI has also faced multiple lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT’s design has contributed to users’ suicides, violent acts, and severe mental health crises.
The fresh complaints, filed in California court on Tuesday, represent the first time the legal strategy against OpenAI has shifted to an intentional harm theory rather than negligence. That change in legal theory reflects the plaintiffs’ evolving assessment of the company’s culpability in the events of February 10. The “aiding and abetting” claim, however, faces a higher evidentiary bar and invites early dismissal challenges that the company will likely pursue.
Frequently Asked Questions
What new allegations do the 30 complaints add to the original lawsuits?
The new complaints accuse OpenAI of aiding and abetting the shooting rather than negligently failing to prevent it. They also specifically allege that Chris Lehane, the company's Chief Global Affairs Officer, overruled recommendations from OpenAI's threat assessment team to alert Canadian authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar.
Why do the complaints focus on Chris Lehane's role?
The plaintiffs argue that Lehane, whose background is in political crisis management and public relations, oversees the Intelligence and Investigations Team responsible for identifying threats. They claim this reporting structure prioritizes damage control over safety and that Lehane or someone in his chain of command made the final decision not to alert law enforcement.
How do the complaints respond to OpenAI's 'imminent risk' defense?
Complaints cite an incident in November 2025 when OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices and alerted police about an alleged activist threat, even though the company acknowledged there was no indication of active threat activity. Plaintiffs argue this shows OpenAI applied a different safety standard when its own employees were at risk compared to when a ChatGPT user posed threats.
