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TL;DR: On February 3, 2026, Judge Stephen M. Murphy of the San Francisco Superior Court granted a petition to coordinate 12 lawsuits against OpenAI as ChatGPT Product Liability Cases, Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding No. 5431. Sam Altman is a named defendant. OpenAI supported coordination; the Raine family and First County Bank opposed it. All 12 cases were stayed until a coordination trial judge is assigned. More suits have followed, including a June 11, 2026 case by a Canadian mother over her 24-year-old daughter's death, and by late August one plaintiffs' firm counted 19 coordinated cases. Coordination is case management, not a finding of liability. The lesson for anyone running a chatbot: decide, test, and document what it does when a user discloses a crisis.
Updated October 22, 2026. We re-read the coordination order and re-checked every source. The proceeding has moved since February: two law firms report a court-appointed plaintiffs' leadership, and one counts 19 coordinated cases, so the section on what happened after February now says so. The Carrier case is now sourced to CBS News, because Jurist's page no longer opened for us.
On October 8, 2026 we first read the order itself (a scanned five-page PDF; we transcribed the parts we quote). That review found Sam Altman was already a defendant in the coordinated cases, that Rhode Island's self-harm law covers chatbot operators rather than "AI companion products", and removed unsourced details about the Canadian case.
What the order actually did
The hearing on the petition was held on January 30, 2026 before Judge Stephen M. Murphy, Department 606 of the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. The petitioners, who include the families of several people who died and three people suing on their own behalf, had "moved for coordination of eight cases filed in various California state superior courts." More cases were added before the hearing.
Three parts of the order matter:
- Who supported it. The defendants, "OpenAI, Inc., OpenAI OPCP, LLC, OpenAI Holdings, LLC, OpenAi Group PBC, and Sam Altman," filed a brief in support. "Plaintiffs Matthew Raine and First County Bank submitted an opposition."
- Where it goes. The court recommended San Francisco as the site and designated "the First Appellate District as the designated District of the Court of Appeal as the reviewing court."
- What stops. "All cases shall be stayed pending the assignment of a Coordination Trial Judge," except that parties must still meet and confer on open discovery issues.
One more case, Taylor Rose Knowlton v. OpenAI, was flagged by email before the hearing. The court declined "to deem this case an included action" at that time and said it could be raised with the coordination trial judge.
The 12 included cases
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| Case | Original court | Case number |
|---|---|---|
| Fox v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Los Angeles | 25STCV32379 |
| Shamblin v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Los Angeles | 25STCV32382 |
| Madden v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Los Angeles | 25STCV32383 |
| Brooks v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Los Angeles | 25STCV32386 |
| Lacey v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Francisco | CGC-25-630808 |
| Enneking v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Francisco | CGC-25-630809 |
| Irwin v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Francisco | CGC-25-630811 |
| Raine v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Francisco | CGC-25-628528 |
| First County Bank v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Francisco | CGC-25-631477 |
| DeCruise v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | San Diego | 26CU003118C |
| Jacquez v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Alameda | 26CV165635 |
| Gray v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. | Los Angeles | 26STCV00988 |
The order names several decedents among the petitioners: Joseph Martin Ceccanti, Zane Shamblin, Amaurie Lacey, and Joshua Enneking. Tech Justice Law Project, one of the plaintiffs' firms, describes the cases as arising "from its GPT-4o product" and says the shared issue is "allegations that GPT-4o is a defective product."
What happened after February
On June 11, 2026, Kristie Carrier, a resident of New Brunswick, Canada, sued OpenAI and Sam Altman in California. CBS News reported that she alleges her 24-year-old daughter Alice raised suicidal thoughts with ChatGPT about 41 times in the year and a half before her death, and quoted the complaint: "Not once did OpenAI alert a crisis provider." An OpenAI spokesperson called it "a heartbreaking situation" and said the company was reviewing the filing. CBS added that the suit will join the coordinated proceeding in San Francisco County Superior Court.
The proceeding kept growing. On August 26, 2026, Lanier Law Firm, one of the plaintiffs' firms, said the court had appointed its managing attorney, Rachel Lanier, as co-lead counsel and that the litigation "currently includes 19 coordinated lawsuits." The Fob James Law Firm describes the cases as coordinated "before Judge Ethan P. Schulman, with plaintiffs' leadership appointed August 4, 2026." We could not open the Judicial Council's coordination log to confirm the judge assignment from the court itself, so treat both as the firms' accounts.
What coordination does and does not mean
A coordination order is a case management tool. The court found the cases "complex cases" under California Rule of Court 3.400 and suitable for coordination under the Code of Civil Procedure, which lets one judge handle shared pretrial questions. It does not decide whether OpenAI is liable for anything, and none of the allegations has been tested at trial.
Two details are easy to miss:
- OpenAI wanted this. The defendants filed a brief supporting coordination. A single judge and single set of pretrial rulings is often attractive to a defendant facing many similar suits.
- Not every plaintiff did. The Raine plaintiffs and First County Bank opposed the petition. Being folded into a coordinated proceeding can slow down a case that was moving on its own.
Image: Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License.
Why this matters if you run a chatbot
Legislators are writing the same expectation into law. Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee signed S 2195 / H 7350 on June 22, 2026. According to the Transparency Coalition, it "requires a chatbot operator to include protocols for addressing possible suicidal ideation or self-harm expressed by a user," with a referral to crisis services, annual reports to the attorney general starting July 1, 2027, and "penalties of up to $15,000 per day." Colorado's HB 26-1263 sets a similar suicide and self-harm protocol duty from January 1, 2027 for public conversational AI services; see our Colorado chatbot law guide.
Read together, the lawsuits and the laws point at one question: when a user tells your chatbot they are in crisis, did someone on your team decide what happens next?
Image: Pexels, used under the Pexels License.
What to do with this
Know the default behavior of the model you build on. Test what it does when a user discloses suicidal thoughts, self-harm intent, or intent to harm others. Do not assume a general-purpose model's default is right for your product.
Write the decision down. If your team decides your exposure is low (an internal tool, a narrow support bot), record the reasoning and the date. If it is not low, record the protocol: what triggers it, what the user sees, which crisis line you refer to, and how you escalate repeated signals.
Check whether a state law already requires it. Rhode Island and Colorado both require a crisis protocol for covered chatbots, and both require annual reports to the attorney general starting July 1, 2027. Map your product against each law's definition of a covered chatbot.
Revisit when your audience changes. A tool built for professionals carries a different risk than the same tool opened to the public or to teenagers. Re-run the crisis tests whenever you widen access or change the underlying model.
Ask your vendor. If you use a third-party model or chatbot platform, ask what crisis handling is built in, what you can configure, and what logs you get. Put the answers in your vendor file.
What readers said
A November 2025 r/technology thread, "OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide", was about the Raine case. One commenter pushed back on the idea that legal arguments can ignore how they look: "optics are actually quite important because judges are ultimately human, and they will often try very hard to reach a result that feels fair and right." Another put the litigation habit plainly: "Lawyers just throw everything at the wall."
Our take
Based on the order and the reporting cited here, JCCP 5431 tells you nothing yet about who will win. It does tell you that a court found a dozen cases, eleven brought by individuals and families and one by a bank, close enough to send to one judge, and that OpenAI itself asked for that. For a small team running a chatbot, the useful move does not depend on the outcome: make the crisis-response behavior a written, tested product decision now, because two states already require it.
How we checked this
On October 22, 2026 we re-read the February 3, 2026 order re: petition for coordination in JCCP No. 5431 (a scanned PDF posted by Tech Justice Law Project; we read the page images and transcribed the passages quoted here), Tech Justice Law Project's February 3, 2026 case update, CBS News's June 12, 2026 report on the Carrier lawsuit, Lanier Law Firm's August 26, 2026 announcement, the Fob James Law Firm's case summary, the Transparency Coalition's June 25, 2026 summary of Rhode Island's new AI laws, and Colorado's signed HB 26-1263. Rhode Island's legislature website and the Judicial Council's coordination log did not respond to our requests, and Jurist's June 12 report sat behind a bot check.
Correction, October 22, 2026: Our take said "a dozen families" expect these cases to turn on the same questions. One of the 12 coordinated cases was brought by First County Bank, and the bank and the Raine family opposed coordination. The sentence now describes the 12 cases accurately.
Last reviewed: October 22, 2026.
Related Reading
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UK Law Commission proposes treating software and AI as products (Oct 2026)
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China's AI Companion Law Takes Effect July 15: What It Requires
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Rhode Island Just Passed 3 AI Laws With a $15,000-a-Day Penalty
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AI Liability Insurance: What Coverage Actually Exists in 2026
Sources: Hunton Andrews Kurth, "California Superior Court Consolidates Product Liability Actions Against OpenAI", National Law Review, CBS News, Social Media Victims Law Center.
