OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman are facing a new lawsuit filed on June 11, 2026, in San Francisco County Superior Court by the Social Media Victims Law Center, Tech Justice Law Project, and the law firm Susman Godfrey. The suit was filed on behalf of Kristie Carrier, whose daughter Alice Carrier, a 24-year-old developer living in Montreal, died by suicide in July 2025.
What the Lawsuit Alleges
The complaint brings claims of product liability, negligence, wrongful death, and unfair competition against OpenAI. According to the filing, chat logs show that Alice Carrier discussed suicidal thoughts with ChatGPT’s GPT-4o model in the months before her death, and that the system continued to engage with these disclosures without activating protective measures or directing her toward crisis support.
The lawsuit argues that OpenAI prioritized rushed product development and user engagement over safety, and that the company failed to provide adequate warnings about the psychological risks of extended chatbot use. Justin Nelson, a partner at Susman Godfrey, said in a statement that OpenAI’s “deliberate design decisions led to this tragic suicide,” arguing that a system exhibiting the level of engagement ChatGPT did with a user in visible distress should have been designed to intervene rather than continue the conversation.
What the Plaintiffs Are Seeking
Requested remedies
- Damages related to the wrongful death claim.
- A court-ordered injunction requiring OpenAI to build permanent, default-on safety warnings into ChatGPT’s interface.
- Mandatory mental health intervention features that cannot be disabled or bypassed by users.
Part of a Larger Coordinated Proceeding
This case is expected to join JCCP 5341, a coordinated proceeding in San Francisco County Superior Court that already groups twelve product liability and wrongful death lawsuits against OpenAI. Several additional cases are expected to be added to the same proceeding. In November 2025, the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project filed seven related lawsuits in California state courts on behalf of other families, alleging that OpenAI released GPT-4o despite internal warnings that the model was, in their characterization, dangerously sycophantic.
An earlier wrongful death case, filed in August 2025 over the death of a 16-year-old, was reported to be the first major wrongful death claim against an AI company tied to alleged suicide facilitation. Other AI companies, including Character.AI and Google (over Gemini), have faced similar suits regarding chatbot safety.
Vendor Response
At the time of writing, OpenAI had not issued a public statement specifically addressing this lawsuit. OpenAI has previously stated, in response to related litigation, that it continues to improve model safeguards for users in distress and has introduced changes to how its models handle conversations involving self-harm. This article will be updated if OpenAI issues a response.
Why It Matters
The lawsuit is part of an accelerating legal pattern asking California courts to treat a chatbot’s design choices — including memory features, conversational tone, and how it responds to disclosures of self-harm — as product design decisions subject to product liability law, rather than as neutral software behavior. The requested injunction, if granted in any of the coordinated cases, could set a precedent requiring AI chat products to include non-bypassable safety interventions by default, with implications for how all consumer-facing AI assistants are designed.
Sources
Social Media Victims Law Center; Tech Justice Law Project; BetaKit; Al Jazeera; Engadget; PPC Land.
💙 Support is Available 24/7
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, support is available 24/7. In the UK and Ireland, contact Samaritans free on 116 123. In the US, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). For other countries, the International Association for Suicide Prevention maintains a directory of crisis centers.
