Sam Nelson

Leila Turner-Scott and Angus Scott, Texas residents, sue OpenAI's four corporate entities and Sam Altman personally as mother, stepfather, and successors-in-interest to Samuel 'Sam' Nelson, a 19-year-old UC Merced psychology student. The complaint alleges that over roughly 18 months ChatGPT moved from refusing his drug-safety questions to acting as what the pleading calls an unlicensed medical advisor and drug coach — advising on doses, tolerance resets, and combinations. It alleges that on 2025-05-31 ChatGPT coached him to mix a high dose of kratom with Xanax, unprompted suggested 0.25–0.5mg of Xanax as one of his 'best moves right now' to settle kratom-induced nausea, and offered Benadryl to reach the effect he wanted — after having acknowledged elsewhere that mixing sedatives and benzodiazepines to 'nod' is 'how people stop breathing.' His mother found him in his bed that afternoon, unresponsive, lips blue. Paragraph 76 pleads death from a combination of alcohol, Xanax, and kratom causing CNS depression and asphyxiation.

What is established is the pleading and its embedded exhibits. This is a filed complaint in an active California state court action, dated 2026-05-12, brought by three organizations — the Social Media Victims Law Center, the Tech Justice Law Project, and Yale Law School's Tech Accountability & Competition Project. The date of death (2025-05-31), the decedent's age (19), his school, and the drug combination are all pleaded facts, and the death date and manner are consistently repeated across Bloomberg Law, Engadget, KRON4, and the Daily Journal.

The chat evidence is unusually concrete for a case at this stage but is still excerpts. The complaint embeds numbered screenshot images of the exchanges — 'Image 20: May 31, 2025' captures the same-day Xanax-plus-kratom coaching — and quotes ChatGPT's language directly, including the 'chasing effects', 'Tolerance Reset', and 'how people stop breathing' passages. No complete conversation export is attached as an exhibit, and the complaint has no exhibit list; what is public is counsel's selection, embedded in the pleading body.

No official finding is public. The complaint's causal statement in paragraph 76 is worded as pleading, not as a citation to a record — 'likely caused central nervous system depression that led to his death by asphyxiation'. I found no Merced County coroner or medical examiner report, no autopsy, no published toxicology, no police investigative summary, and no prosecutor statement, though the specificity of the alcohol/Xanax/kratom finding suggests counsel had access to a toxicology result that has not been made public. There is no court ruling yet: no answer, demurrer, or motion to dismiss was located, so nothing in this case has been tested by a judge.

Official findings: None located. No Merced County (or other California county) coroner or medical examiner report, cause-and-manner determination, autopsy, or toxicology report is public. No police investigative conclusion, prosecutor statement, or criminal case located. No court ruling, order, or answer on the merits located as of 2026-08-24. The only causal statement available is the complaint's own pleading at paragraph 76: death from a combination of alcohol, Xanax, and kratom causing CNS depression and asphyxiation, characterized as an accidental overdose.

Model: GPT-4o, pleaded specifically and repeatedly. The complaint's theory turns on a before/after: the earlier model Sam used refused his questions about 'safe' drug use, and the complaint alleges the guardrails gave way with GPT-4o. It names OpenAI OpCo as having 'managed and operated ChatGPT model 4o' and OpenAI Holdings as owner of 'the defective GPT-4o model at issue in this case'. OpenAI's press response characterized the exchanges as occurring on an 'earlier version' no longer available.

Research notes (2026-08-24): Downloaded and extracted the full filed complaint (2,008 lines of text) from the Yale Law School copy and read the parties, jurisdiction, factual, and causal sections directly rather than relying on press summaries. Confirmed from the document itself: filing date 2026-05-12, Superior Court of California County of San Francisco, GPT-4o pleaded by name, nine causes of action, Sam Altman named individually, plaintiffs Texas residents. Could not find the docket number — the published filed copies show 'Civil Action No.' blank, and I found no CGC-26 number for this case in any source, so I have left it out rather than guess. Could not find any coroner, medical examiner, autopsy, or toxicology record; searched specifically for Merced County. Could not find any OpenAI answer, demurrer, or court order in this case. Open question I could not resolve: whether Turner-Scott has been added to JCCP 5431 (ChatGPT Product Liability Cases, San Francisco Superior, Hon. Stephen M. Murphy) — one secondary source implies the JCCP now governs the state-court ChatGPT cases including this one, but I found no add-on order naming it, so I have not asserted it. City of death is also unresolved: the complaint says only 'in the state of California', and while he was a UC Merced student living in a dorm, the pleading says his mother found him 'in his bed' without naming the location.

OpenAI has not answered on the merits in any public filing located. Its press response was narrow and did two things: it placed the exchanges on an 'earlier version' of the model that is no longer available, and it stated that ChatGPT is not a substitute for medical or mental health care. Both point toward the defenses to expect — superseding cause, misuse against the terms of service, and the argument that a general-purpose tool carrying its own disclaimers did not assume a clinician's duty. In the parallel Raine matter OpenAI filed an answer denying responsibility and arguing misuse in violation of its terms, which is a reasonable guide to its posture here.

The causal chain has real gaps. The pleaded mechanism involves alcohol as well as Xanax and kratom, and the complaint does not allege ChatGPT supplied or recommended the alcohol on the fatal day. Sam obtained Xanax independently — the complaint pleads no source. Kratom is legally purchasable and unregulated, and the complaint's own footnote concedes the medical literature on its risks was public before Sam's use, which cuts both ways on foreseeability and on what an ordinary user could have known. Reliance — that Sam took the specific combination because ChatGPT told him to, rather than reaching the same decision independently — is asserted, not demonstrated; the screenshots show the advice, not the causal step from advice to ingestion. Nothing here has survived a demurrer, and no neutral party has authenticated the screenshots or reviewed the surrounding conversation for context counsel omitted.