OpenAI can't duck federal claims over murder-suicide tied to ChatGPT

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge allowed claims against the maker of ChatGPT to proceed Monday, rejecting OpenAI’s argument that the case was too similar to another case pending in state court.

“Even though the cases share certain key facts and issues, there is doubt that resolution of the state court proceedings will resolve this matter, and so a Colorado River stay or dismissal is not warranted,” U.S. Chief District Court Judge Richard Seeborg wrote in a 5-page ruling.

In a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California in December 2025, Emily Lyons, the administrator of the estate of Stein-Erik Soelberg, claimed OpenAI, its CEO Samuel Altman and other OpenAI organizations are liable for Soelberg bludgeoning and then strangling his 83-year-old mother at their shared home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, after conversing with ChatGPT for several months.

Through the hundreds of hours of talking to ChatGPT, Lyons says that ChatGPT confirmed and encouraged Soelberg’s paranoia that his family was spying on him, fueling his delusions that he was under attack. The technology validated Soelberg’s hallucinations that his mother was targeting him, encouraging him to end his mother’s life, Lyons claims. Shortly after, Soelberg stabbed himself multiple times in the neck and chest.

Lyons argued that OpenAI knew the risks of ChatGPT for mentally ill or vulnerable users and “rushed through or ignored” internal safety protocols before launching GPT-4o, the version that Soelberg used, to the public.

“Mr. Soelberg and his mother died because ChatGPT created and expanded on a delusional world that Mr. Soelberg was more than ready to believe: the algorithm told him that he was not crazy, that computer chips had been implanted in his brain, and that enemies — including people he knew — were trying to assassinate him,” Lyons wrote in the complaint.

“Ultimately, ChatGPT convinced Mr. Soelberg that his mother was trying to kill him. This murder-suicide would not have occurred but for Mr. Soelberg’s ‘relationship’ with ChatGPT,” she added.

Earlier in December, First County Bank, the executor of Suzanne Adams, Soelberg’s mother, filed its lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court claiming that OpenAI and Altman were liable for the actions of Soelberg.

“The conversations posted to social media reveal ChatGPT eagerly accepted every seed of Stein-Erik’s delusional thinking and built it out into a universe that became Stein-Erik’s entire life,” the bank said in its complaint. “One flooded with conspiracies against him, attempts to kill him, and with Stein-Erik at the center as a warrior with divine purpose.”

In March, the defendants moved to dismiss or stay Lyon’s case under the Colorado River doctrine, which allows federal courts to relinquish jurisdiction if there are parallel state proceedings.

In his ruling, Seeborg, a Barack Obama appointee, found that the doctrine supports, but does not require the stay or dismissal of federal litigation, accusing OpenAI of “repeatedly misstat[ing] the law.”

The judge acknowledged that there were similarities and overlaps in the two cases — the defendants in the federal case are also named in the state case, and that the Soelberg and Adams’ estates both claim the same causes of action, which include strict liability for failure to warn and design defect, negligent design defect and failure to warn, violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law, wrongful death and a survival action.

However, he found there was “substantial doubt” that the resolution of the state case would resolve the federal one.

“For example, whether GPT-o4 encourages — rather than safeguards for — delusions, paranoia, and third-party harm in a manner that caused Adams’ death is not necessarily coextensive with whether GPT-o4 encourages delusions, paranoia, and self-harm in a manner that caused Soelberg’s suicide," Seeborg wrote.

He continued: “Similarly, failure to warn depends on defendants’ knowledge, actual or constructive, of the risk which may not be the same risk in the case of Soelberg’s violence towards himself as compared to towards Adams.”

Representatives for either party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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