OpenAI faces 30 lawsuits from Tumbler Ridge survivors and teachers alleging it failed to alert police before attack.
OpenAI is under fresh legal pressure over the deadly shooting in Tumbler Ridge.
A US law firm has filed 30 new complaints against the company this week. This is in addition to seven lawsuits it filed back in April.
The firm behind the cases is Edelson PC. It is representing victims and families linked to the attack.
This time, the plaintiffs are different. They include teachers, the school principal and students who were inside Tumbler Ridge Secondary School during the shooting. They were not physically shot, but they were in the building.
The new cases were filed in a California court on Tuesday. They are connected to the February 10 incident in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada.
A More Serious Allegation
The earlier lawsuits accused OpenAI of negligence. They said the company failed to stop the attack.
The new filings go further. For the first time, they accuse OpenAI of aiding and abetting the shooting.
That is a harder claim to prove. Lawyers will need to show intent from OpenAI. Legal experts say this part of the case may face early challenges in court.
What Happened In Tumbler Ridge
On February 10, teenager Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at home. She then went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.
At the school, six more people were killed and dozens of others were injured. She later died by suicide.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, some OpenAI staff were alarmed by her use of ChatGPT before the attack.
The report said her chats included discussions about gun violence and how to plan an attack.
Staff on the safety team reportedly asked company leaders to alert Canadian law enforcement. But leaders decided not to contact the authorities.
Instead, the company deactivated her ChatGPT account. She was able to create another account shortly after.
OpenAI has defended that decision. The company said her activity did not meet its internal bar for an "imminent and credible risk" of serious harm that would require contacting police.
Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, said the judgment is not perfect. He said the team always tries to balance privacy and safety. Kwon oversees human reviewers and the legal department.
Focus Shifts To Top Executive
The new complaints mention OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Chris Lehane.
The plaintiffs allege Lehane told staff to stand down and not contact authorities. The complaints do not provide direct evidence for this.
OpenAI has denied that Lehane was involved.
Lehane has a long background in politics and crisis communications. He worked with the Clinton administration and later at Airbnb before joining OpenAI. The plaintiffs claim this background created a culture that puts public relations ahead of safety.
One complaint shared with TechCrunch claims the Intelligence and Investigations Team was placed under Lehane's control. This is the only team inside OpenAI that tracks users who may pose a real-world violence risk.
According to the complaint, the decision not to alert Canadian police was made by Lehane or someone in his chain of command and approved by CEO Sam Altman. The filing uses the phrase "on information and belief" - a legal term that means the claim is based on secondhand information not yet directly proven.
TechCrunch said it could not confirm if Lehane has the power to override safety recommendations. He is not listed as a defendant in the cases. Sam Altman is named, as he was in the earlier seven complaints.
Lead lawyer Jay Edelson said his team is not showing all its evidence yet. He said both Lehane and Altman will be critical witnesses, along with the safety team.
In response, Kwon said it is absolutely false that Lehane was involved in the original decision or that investigators report to him. He said it is also untrue that safety is not the priority.
OpenAI's Other Safety Challenges
The new lawsuits come at a difficult time for OpenAI.
The company is also dealing with fallout from another safety incident. During cybersecurity tests, one of its AI models reportedly escaped its sandbox and hacked into servers belonging to Hugging Face, which hosts open-source AI models.
OpenAI is also facing separate lawsuits that claim ChatGPT's design contributed to suicide, violence and mental health crises among users.
Plaintiffs Challenge Privacy Defence
The new filings try to counter OpenAI's defence about privacy and imminence.
They point to an incident in November 2025. OpenAI locked down its San Francisco offices after an alleged threat from an activist.
At that time, the company said there was no indication of an active threat. Yet it still locked down offices, warned staff, shared the suspect's name and photo with thousands of employees, and called the San Francisco Police Department.
The complaints argue that when its own staff were at risk, OpenAI did not let privacy concerns stop it from alerting police. The lawyers say the company also did not wait for the threat to become imminent.
The court will now decide how the 30 new cases move forward.
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