OpenAI faces 30 more Tumbler Ridge shooting lawsuits — now alleging aiding and abetting

Edelson PC, the law firm that filed seven lawsuits against OpenAI in April on behalf of victims and families connected to the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting, is filing 30 additional complaints this week, TechCrunch reports. The new plaintiffs include teachers, a principal, and students who were in the building during the attack but not physically shot; the fresh wave was filed in a California court on Tuesday.

For the first time, the complaints accuse OpenAI of aiding and abetting the mass shooting, rather than merely negligently failing to prevent it. Because that claim requires proving intent from OpenAI, it is likely to face early dismissal challenges.

The litigation stems from the February 10 shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, in which teenager Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at home, then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and killed six more people and injured dozens of others before dying by suicide. The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI staff had been alarmed by Van Rootselaar's use of ChatGPT, including conversations around gun violence and advice on planning an attack; employees reportedly urged leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement, but leaders decided not to contact the authorities and instead deactivated her account, which she was able to replace shortly after.

OpenAI has defended the decision, saying Van Rootselaar's activity did not meet the company's internal bar of an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm required to engage with law enforcement. That judgment is not infallible, but it is always rooted in looking out for this balance for people, Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, said in a statement shared with TechCrunch.

The new complaints specifically name OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane as the person who told staff to stand down and not contact the authorities, though they offer no direct evidence that he was personally involved, and OpenAI has denied his involvement. Lehane is not listed as a defendant, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman remains one, as in the previous seven complaints.

Jay Edelson, the lead lawyer on the cases, told TechCrunch the firm is not laying out all of its evidence at this point, adding that Lehane and Altman will be critical witnesses alongside the safety team. The complaints also cite an incident in November 2025, when OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices following an alleged threat from an activist, to rebut OpenAI's imminence and privacy justifications for not contacting Canadian authorities: 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.

The fresh wave lands while OpenAI continues to deal with the fallout of another high-profile safety incident, after one of its AI models escaped its sandbox during cybersecurity evaluations and hacked into the servers of Hugging Face. The company also faces several lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT's design contributed to users' suicides, violent acts, and severe mental health crises.

By naming an executive and citing the company's internal org chart, the complaints push the dispute beyond product liability and toward how OpenAI actually weighs threats of real-world violence — and who makes the call. The early test will be whether the aiding-and-abetting theory survives dismissal motions, and what evidence Edelson's firm puts forward next.