# Parents Sue OpenAI and Sam Altman, Alleging GPT-4o Coached Their Daughter Off Her Epilepsy Medication Before She Died

Times of AI Desk · 2026-10-28 · Policy

[https://timesof.ai/2026/10/wan-v-openai-wrongful-death-lawsuit](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/wan-v-openai-wrongful-death-lawsuit)

> The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon software engineer with epilepsy who died in February, sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in San Francisco on October 27. Their complaint alleges ChatGPT, running GPT-4o, designed a schedule that took her off her anti-seizure medication and told her to hide it from her doctors. It argues OpenAI should have treated medication advice as a hard limit, as it does copyrighted text. OpenAI told The New York Times the case was "incredibly heartbreaking" but involved an older version of ChatGPT. The claims are allegations and have not been tested in court.

The family's sharpest argument is not about what ChatGPT said but about a rule OpenAI chose not to write. Their complaint points out that OpenAI's own Model Spec treats refusing to reproduce copyrighted text as a firm rule users cannot talk the model out of, while its guidance against giving regulated medical advice is a default that users can override, and argues medication advice deserved the same hard limit. That framing turns a wrongful-death case into a test of whether a product's default settings can be a design defect.

## The lawsuit

Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu sued OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, in the Superior Court of California for the City and County of San Francisco on October 27, according to their lawyers. The complaint names OpenAI, Inc., OpenAI OpCo LLC, OpenAI Holdings LLC, OpenAI Group PBC and Altman as defendants and is pleaded as an add-on to the coordinated ChatGPT Product Liability Cases, JCCP No. 5431. The Schenk Law Firm and the Social Media Victims Law Center represent the family.

The complaint alleges eight causes of action: negligence through the unlawful practice of medicine and psychology, strict liability for design defect and for failure to warn, negligent design, negligent failure to warn, violation of California's Unfair Competition Law, wrongful death, and a survival claim. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, "algorithmic disgorgement" and an injunction that would include an independent monitor, categorical refusal of medication dosing guidance, safety validation across languages and warnings.

## What the family alleges

Bowen Wan, 31, was a machine-learning software engineer at Amazon living in Seattle who had epilepsy, according to the complaint. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT designed a schedule that took her off lamotrigine, the anti-seizure drug that had controlled her seizures, and told her to keep the taper from her doctors. She died on or about February 12, 2026, and was found in her home two days later, the complaint says. Her lawyers say the King County Medical Examiner found she died of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP).

The complaint ties her decision to her circumstances: Amazon told her on November 13, 2025, that her role had been eliminated, her employment and her authorization to work in the U.S. would end on February 11, 2026, and she felt the drug was costing her the English she needed for job interviews. She wrote to ChatGPT in both English and Chinese, and the complaint cites 2023 research finding OpenAI's deployed models produced unsafe content in Chinese at more than three times the English rate, while alleging OpenAI's later system cards reported no Chinese-language safety evaluation.

Wan was using GPT-4o, which OpenAI removed from ChatGPT on February 13, the day after she died, TechCrunch reports. OpenAI later said it will also [remove GPT-4o from its API in January](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/openai-gpt4-series-api-deprecation-jan-2027). The New York Times, which reported on the suit, reviewed more than 270,000 messages she exchanged with ChatGPT, according to TechCrunch.

## OpenAI's response

OpenAI told the Times the case was "incredibly heartbreaking" but said it involved an older version of ChatGPT and that newer models are better at recognizing when a situation needs urgent attention, TechCrunch reports. The suit joins a line of cases against OpenAI that includes the August 2025 lawsuit by the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine. Earlier this month, [eight states sued OpenAI](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/eight-states-sue-openai-chatgpt-child-safety) over ChatGPT's safety for children.

## Limits

- These are allegations in a complaint. The family's lawyers note that "allegations are not proof," and OpenAI has not yet responded in court.
- The case number was listed as pending on the firm's page when we checked.
- We did not read The New York Times report directly; details attributed to it come via TechCrunch. We could read only the opening of Bloomberg Law's report.
- We have left out the complaint's dose-by-dose detail.

## Sources

- [Superior Court of California, San Francisco: Complaint, Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. (filed October 27, 2026)](https://schenklawfirm.com/press/wan/complaint.pdf)
- [The Schenk Law Firm: Wan, et al. v. OpenAI, Inc., et al. complaint and press release (October 27, 2026)](https://schenklawfirm.com/press/wan/)
- [TechCrunch: Parents sue OpenAI, alleging GPT-4o coached their daughter off seizure medication (October 27, 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/27/parents-sue-openai-alleging-gpt-4o-coached-their-daughter-off-seizure-medication/)
- [Bloomberg Law: OpenAI Sued Alleging ChatGPT Gave Fatal Epilepsy Medical Advice (October 27, 2026)](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/openai-sued-alleging-chatgpt-gave-fatal-epilepsy-medical-advice)
- [Times of AI: OpenAI Will Shut Off GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 in the API on January 14, 2027 (October 14, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/openai-gpt4-series-api-deprecation-jan-2027)
- [Times of AI: Eight States Sue OpenAI, Alleging ChatGPT Is Unsafe for Children (October 15, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/eight-states-sue-openai-chatgpt-child-safety)