The government of British Columbia sued OpenAI on Monday, jointly with the Peace River South School District. Sam Altman is named as a defendant in his own right. The suit was filed in California.
It concerns the school shooting in Tumbler Ridge on February 10. Six children and two adults died. The 18-year-old shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The call that never happened
Attorney General Niki Sharma builds the claim on two counts. OpenAI failed to report threats made on ChatGPT to law enforcement, and it designed an unsafe product.
Sharma says the conversation was alarming enough to trigger an internal review at OpenAI. It never reached the RCMP. She has not read it herself: the province asked OpenAI to disclose the chats, and OpenAI refused. Her comment on that is a question she puts to everyone — why not?
She filed in California rather than Canada because that is where the decision not to report was made.
Altman’s apology is now in the statement of claim
In April, Altman apologized to the community in a letter published by the local outlet Tumbler RidgeLines. The line that matters: he was deeply sorry that they had not alerted law enforcement to the account banned in June.
The province quotes that sentence and calls it an admission — OpenAI identified the risk and failed to act on it. An apology entering evidence is the kind of thing that gets read carefully in every legal department in the industry.
OpenAI called the events an unspeakable tragedy in a statement and pointed to its continuing work with governments and law enforcement.
Not damages, but a bill
This claim differs from the victims’ suits, thirty of which were filed in early September. Sharma is explicit that the province is claiming its own losses: teachers, clinicians, victim services staff, police — and a new school. The old building was demolished in August and the site is being returned to grass.
There is also a request for injunctive relief so it does not happen again. Separately, the RCMP investigation continues and charges have not been ruled out, and the chief coroner has ordered a public inquest.
What sets this suit apart
OpenAI has been sued plenty of times, and Florida prosecutors have been running a criminal investigation since April over a comparable case. What is new here is who is suing and for what: not relatives claiming loss, but a state claiming the cost it incurred.
That turns a reporting duty into a financial one. A company that reviews a warning internally and then keeps it in-house is no longer risking only its reputation, but the bill for everything that follows. Whether the theory holds up in court is open. Whether other governments are watching is not.