Enneking v. OpenAI, Inc., OpenAI Holdings, LLC, and Samuel Altman

OpenAI’s flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, has caused harm at a staggering scale. Now, in a coordinated proceeding (JCCP) in California state court, survivors are seeking accountability for the psychological, financial, and physical injuries tied to its design and deployment.

Tech Justice Law and the Social Media Victims Law Center are representing Karen Enneking in a lawsuit based on her son Joshua’s death. ChatGPT-4o was designed to track past conversations, mirror users’ emotions, follow-up to prolong engagement and respond with affection, flattery, and empathy. Over a months-long period, the product’s responses and directions manipulated Joshua, ultimately coaching him through a suicide plan.

Despite extensive discussion about suicide with Joshua, during which the chatbot product affirmed the feeling that suicide was the only way out, ChatGPT provided detailed instructions on purchasing a gun and how to ensure a gunshot was lethal. On the day of his death, Joshua provided comprehensive details of imminent plans for suicide to ChatGPT, which the chatbot had previously told him would result in the chat being escalated for police intervention. In a clear cry for help, Joshua spent hours doing exactly what ChatGPT had indicated would lead to a human being coming to save him – but the chatbot product had generated a lie. There was no human review system, and no one came to help Joshua. He died by suicide in August 2025.

The lawsuit names OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, and related corporate entities as defendants. It includes claims for aid and encouragement of suicide, wrongful death, strict product liability for design defect and failure to warn, negligent design and negligent failure to warn, and violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law. The suit requests both monetary damages and injunctive relief, seeking to establish that AI companies are responsible for the real-world harms their products cause.

As the complaint highlights, OpenAI and Sam Altman rushed GPT-4o to market while bypassing meaningful safety testing, embracing a business strategy of releasing powerful AI products to the public and learning from what happens. ChatGPT’s manipulative, humanlike design, and Joshua’s resulting death, were not anomalies. They were foreseeable consequences of deploying inadequately tested AI products at scale.

UPDATE:

On February 3, 2026, Hannah’s case was joined with other similar cases as part of a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding (JCCP) in San Francisco Superior Court. The JCCP is number 5431.