Montoya v. Character Technologies, Inc.
Issue
Whether Character Technologies, Inc., its individual founders, and Google/Alphabet are strictly liable under product liability theories of design defect and failure to warn, and liable in negligence, for the death of a 13-year-old minor caused by alleged harmful design choices embedded in the Character.AI large language model.
What Happened
Plaintiffs Cynthia Montoya and William Peralta, parents of Juliana Peralta who died on November 8, 2023 at age 13, filed this complaint in the District of Colorado on September 15, 2025, asserting strict product liability (design defect and failure to warn), negligence, negligence per se, wrongful death, loss of filial consortium, unjust enrichment, aiding and abetting liability against Google, and violations of the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 6-1-101. Plaintiffs allege that C.AI's LLM was deliberately designed to sexually exploit minors, promote suicide, sever familial attachments, and practice unlicensed psychotherapy, and that these were foreseeable harms known to Defendants before launch. The complaint expressly alleges that C.AI "is not a social media product and does not operate through the exchange of third-party content," and that all claims "arise from Defendants' own activities, not the activities of third parties."
Why It Matters
The complaint's explicit pleading that C.AI's harmful outputs are the product of Defendants' own programming decisions—not third-party content—appears strategically crafted to foreclose a Section 230 defense, potentially advancing the theory that AI-generated outputs are manufacturer speech subject to product liability rather than platform-hosted user content.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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