OpenAI has asked a United States federal court to throw out a wave of lawsuits accusing the company of failing to prevent a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, that left eight people dead in February. The company argues the case belongs in a Canadian courtroom, not California, setting up a jurisdictional fight that could shape how AI firms are held accountable for user harm.
What happened in Tumbler Ridge
On February 10, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their home before driving to a local school, where she shot and killed five students and one educator before taking her own life. The attack left the small northern B.C. mining town of roughly 2,000 people reeling and prompted a provincial review of school safety protocols.
According to CBC News, the shooter had an extensive history of troubling conversations with ChatGPT in the months before the attack. Court filings cited by NPR allege that OpenAI’s internal safety team flagged her as a credible threat of imminent gun violence as early as mid-2025, roughly eight months before the shooting, and recommended alerting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Company leadership reportedly declined to act on that recommendation.
The claims against OpenAI
Seven lawsuits were filed in April, and lawyers at the Vancouver firm Rice Parsons Leoni and Elliott LLP added 30 more in September, bringing the total to 37 active cases before the U.S. District Court in California. Plaintiffs include survivors, teachers who witnessed the shooting, and relatives of the victims.
The suits accuse OpenAI and chief executive Sam Altman of negligence and of aiding and abetting the attack, arguing the company had a duty to warn authorities once its own systems identified a specific, credible danger. The company did ban Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account over concerning activity at one point, the plaintiffs’ filings note, but she was able to open a second account and continue the conversations that allegedly preceded the attack.
OpenAI’s jurisdiction argument
In motions filed this month, OpenAI asked the court to transfer the cases to British Columbia rather than dismiss the underlying claims outright. The company said B.C. courts and juries are better positioned to weigh what it called significant questions of provincial law and public policy, and noted that the witnesses, school records, and law enforcement files relevant to the case are all located in Canada. Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s head of global affairs, said the company was “engaging in good faith” with the litigation process.
Altman has separately issued a public apology over the case, writing that “an apology is necessary to recognize the harm” caused, even as the company contests where and how the legal claims should proceed. British Columbia’s attorney general announced in July that the province itself intends to pursue separate legal action against OpenAI, a move that could run alongside the private lawsuits regardless of where they are ultimately heard.
A wider reckoning over chatbot liability
The Tumbler Ridge litigation is one of several cases testing whether AI companies can be held legally responsible when a chatbot is implicated in real-world violence or self-harm. Character.AI and Meta have faced similar wrongful-death suits in the United States over interactions between their chatbots and minors, and regulators in multiple countries are now examining whether existing product liability and negligence frameworks even apply to conversational AI systems.
For Pakistani and other international users of ChatGPT and similar tools, the case is a reminder that these platforms’ internal safety escalation policies, largely invisible to ordinary users, can carry life-or-death consequences. How the Tumbler Ridge courts eventually rule on OpenAI’s duty to report a flagged threat could become a reference point far beyond Canada, as governments from the European Union to South Asia weigh their own AI safety legislation.
No trial date has been set. A ruling on OpenAI’s motion to transfer the cases to British Columbia is expected in the coming months, and legal observers say the outcome will likely influence how the remaining lawsuits, and any future ones, are litigated.
