Since 2021, our firm’s Founder, Carrie Goldberg, and Partner, Naomi Leeds, have led the nation in the fight against corporations peddling in suicide. The chief offender? Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon knew as early as 2018 that vulnerable kids and adults were using its site to quickly and easily purchase a suicide chemical. Amazon heard from one grieving parent after after another that the death of their children occurred as a result of its sale of one discreet product: laboratory grade Sodium Nitrite at 98+% purity (“SN”), a product with zero household uses. In the face of desperate pleas to stop selling and delivering this exceptionally hazardous product into the homes of its customers, Amazon kept selling.
Beginning with Scott v. Amazon in February of 2022, our firm has brought a total of ten lawsuits against Amazon, Inc. on behalf of 28 individuals now dead due to Amazon’s decision to promote, sell, and home-deliver a suicide chemical to its vulnerable customers. Over the past few years, we’ve spoken with roughly five dozen families about the losses of their loved ones, weaving together a devastating patchwork of beautiful and unique souls gone too soon with one connecting thread: Amazon.
The home of Amazon’s operations is Seattle, Washington. This is where we’re suing them. With each lawsuit, Amazon struggles to cobble together arguments for why it should not be held to account for the series of deaths it caused and the families it shattered. Far from being tempted to give up the fight for justice, the resolve of these mourning families only deepens.
Each of the five Washington trial courts that has ruled on Amazon’s motions to dismiss, has ruled that the litigations must go forward. Frustrated by not getting its way, Amazon filed appeal after appeal in further attempts of getting the cases tossed before discovery.
On November 25 of last year, the Division One Court of Appeals in Washington capitulated to Amazon’s argument which relied on a hundred-year-old legal precedent, reversing our victories in Scott v. Amazon and Viglis v. Amazon. Hamstrung by this ancient case with its lamentably outdated understandings about the “frenzy” of suicide, Division One concluded that the trial court erred in its decisions to let Scott and Viglis proceed and decided those cases should be dismissed unless the Washington Supreme Court (WASC) overturned the precedent
We – on behalf of the Scott/Viglis families petitioned for review by WASC and were one of the rare cases to have that granted.
On September 9th, the Washington Supreme Court will convene at the Temple of Justice in Olympia to hear our appeal. We’ll get the opportunity to speak directly to the justices and present our case, animating the facts and clarifying for the court exactly what Amazon knew when it decided over and over again to continue facilitating suicides around the country for more than four years.
The future of Scott/Viglis and the 24 remaining Families lawsuits hinge on the outcome of this appearance.
1. Our Plaintiff-Decedents Used the Product Exactly How Amazon Intended.
In response to our product liability and negligence claims, Amazon says they did nothing wrong, that our plaintiff-decedents are where the defect lies. This is a lie.
At 98+% purity there is zero household use for sodium nitrite. Therefore, there is zero reason for it to be sold to households and non-business Amazon customers. There is even less reason to go on selling and home-delivering a household-useless product if it’s killing purchasers Amazon can try to argue it is too big to control its 600 million products, but Amazon knew that this specific product was commonly used for suicide , yet repeatedly affirmed its right to sell SN and choose not to stop selling this suicide chemical to households across the country.
Companies like eBay, Walmart, and Etsy, immediately removed SN from their marketplaces years ago when it first became apparent that people were utilizing it for suicide. In contrast to its industry competitors, Amazon continued selling SN for 18 months after Carrie and Naomi demanded that they stop. They simply felt entitled to continue growing the Amazon Sodium Nitrite Death Toll.
2. Amazon Knew.
Though there was no known household use for industrial high purity SN when Amazon initially made various brands available for purchase, there became one: suicide. Amazon cannot say using the SN for suicide was a misuse of the product since there was no use in the household context besides suicide. Amazon stamped its approval and support of this use when it learned that its SN killed a child customer in or before 2018 and kept on selling it. Following dozens of notifications of this trend from other grieving parents, Amazon was put on repeated notice of its legal responsibility by lawmakers, lawyers, mourning parents, and the press; we know firsthand that Amazon was made aware of the increasingly popular and tragic household use of SN from the bottom to the top of the organizational structure. Amazon hired lawyers and responded to press requests defending its right to sell the product. So not even Amazon is claiming it didn’t know.
In the case of our plaintiff-decedent, 16-year-old Ayden Wallin, we have proof of the fifty-six direct messages dating back to September 2020 exchanged between his mother, Meredith Mitchell, and an Amazon customer service representative wherein Meredith explains in great detail that Amazon had sold her minor child – a child too young by its own policies to even have an Amazon account. She explains that the pro-suicide sites recommend the product and cautions them to stop making the product available to the general public especially children. –; Meredith is then escalated to the Executive of Customer Service, Shannon Escoto, who promises that Amazon will initiate a product safety investigation. Meredith urges Shannon to not just investigate the brand that killed her son, but also the few other brands it continued to sell. A year later, Escoto told Meredith to stop contacting her because the investigation had closed and Amazon had decided to continue selling SN.
Dating back to May 2021, our firm received direct correspondence from Amazon’s lawyers telling us they have no obligation to stop selling or restricting purchase of any high purity SN products. The majority of our clients’ loved ones were sold the product after that.
3. Access to Lethal Means Matters.
Academic research argues that the number one predictor of whether a suicide attempt is completed is the method used. There is great variability on how lethal different methods are. The fatality rate of sodium nitrite is similar to that of firearms (90%) and much higher than all other suicide attempt methods: drowning (56%), hanging/suffocation (53%), gas/asphyxiation (31%), jumping from heights (28%), jumping from or into moving objects (27%), drug poisoning (2%), nondrug poisoning (1%), and cutting/piercing (0.7%). ., Because it is only possible to attempt suicide using methods that are available to the individual, convenience and accessibility of specific methods are critical determinants of a suicide attempt’s survivability. When highly lethal methods like sodium nitrite are easy to access, the probability that a suicide attempt will result in death is greatly increased. Amazon’s online shopping site and shipping/delivery services dramatically increase the accessibility of sodium nitrite. Individuals who can’t get access to their chosen method do not always substitute an alternative method. And even if they do, an attempt with a less lethal method can determine survivability.
Those who have planned their suicide with highly accessible and highly lethal means like SN are not likely to change their method of suicide should the chemical be inaccessible and instead they may be deterred from attempting altogether.[1]
Furthermore, 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide.[2] This statistic invalidates the notion that everyone who attempts suicide is doomed to die by suicide and that any efforts to divert them from that fate are futile. We’ve found that people who lost somebody dear to suicide are the most likely to believe (incorrectly) the death was inevitable. This is likely a method to cope with the devastating notion that perhaps the death could have been avoided. In If Amazon had restricted access to high purity SN, lives would have been saved . The cheap, seamless, and swift purchase and delivery offered by Amazon is how it became the world’s largest online retailer; the ease with which our clients were able to buy and receive the SN that killed them is a critical factor in discussing Amazon’s liability.[3]
Lastly, the indisputable truth is there is a youth mental health crisis which has been exacerbated greatly by the stressors of the pandemic and ubiquitous social media usage. These factors, combined with the lack of impulse control associated with undeveloped prefrontal cortexes, make America’s youth uniquely vulnerable to an acute period of suicidal ideation. Amazon’s unparalleled convenience, reach, and disregard became the very reason pro-suicide forums directed vulnerable individuals to its product pages. The utter negligence put on display by Amazon flies in the face of how the world’s biggest retailer should respond to a public health crisis serious enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Surgeon General issued reports to sound the alarm.[4],[5]
4. Online Retailers are Not Above the Law.
On the product pages for the SN sold to our plaintiff-decedents, Amazon recommended a manual with a chapter on how to die by suicide using sodium nitrite, a mini scale, a small lockbox, and an anti-emetic which prevents people from vomiting up the poisonous SN. Brick-and-mortar stores are responsible for the products they place next to each other and how employees recommend certain groupings of products. Online retailers are too.
Online retailers like Amazon use all sorts of strategic practices to encourage product sales. Targeted advertising, urgency tactics, social proofing, gamification, anchoring and behavioral nudges influence purchasing behaviors. This combined with possession of a method increases the risk of suicide. Once a suicide method is in a person’s possession, they home in on that method which increases emotional reactivity. About 70% of suicides occur within one hour of the decision to act and suicidal states come and go. [6] [7] [8] [9]
5. The Harm and Risk of Suicide was Completely Foreseeable.
Suicide was not an unexpected or remote consequence of Amazon’s sale of SN—it was the precise and foreseeable harm. SN has no legitimate household use, poses extreme dangers outside professional settings, and had become well-documented as a rising method of suicide. Amazon was repeatedly warned by Members of Congress, attorneys, journalists, and grieving families that this product was being used to end lives. Yet rather than restrict access or implement safeguards, Amazon affirmatively chose to continue offering SN to the public, delivered directly to vulnerable individuals’ doorsteps. This decision made suicide not only foreseeable, but inevitable.
6. “Non-Defective Product”
In response to our Washington Consumer Protection Act violation claim, Amazon asserted that SN is “a non-defective product,” but this is a misleading description of the product. defeDue to its chemical properties and toxicity, it can only be handled safely by scientific and medical professionals in the appropriate settings.
Amazon also likes to obscure the facts by claiming sodium nitrite is a harmless, commonplace ingredient in curing salts housed in cabinets around the country. What this fails to mention is that the product it’s describing, curing salts, are only 6% sodium nitrite. If one used the 99% pure SN Amazon sold our decedents to cure their meat, they would die the same grueling death our deceased clients did. This attempt to soften the extreme toxicity of the SN Amazon sold and delivered to our dead clients is thus faulty and deceptive.
Once Amazon Amazon was on notice of the deadly results from SN, they either need to restrict sales or expect to be held liable for the deaths it would cause. have predicted that an ordinary chemical reagent would soon become a popular suicide
7. Amazon Must Be Held Accountable.
Amazon is liable for the deaths of our 28 clients. It had a clear duty of care not to supply 98+% purity sodium nitrite to households, given that the chemical has no legitimate household use. That duty became undeniable once Amazon was placed on repeated and urgent notice that SN was being used for suicide. By deliberately continuing to sell and deliver it after learning of dozens of deaths, Amazon breached its duty in the most reckless way possible.
Unlike its competitors, who withdrew sodium nitrite from the market once its misuse became known, Amazon stood alone in prioritizing sales over safety. Its decision to stop selling only the brand linked to Ayden Wallin’s death while continuing to sell other brands—used by dozens of additional victims—underscores both the arbitrariness and the callousness of its conduct.
Civil litigation exists to restore balance when corporations cause catastrophic harm. Victims do not come to court lightly, but because they have lost the most basic control over their lives. Here, justice requires that Amazon be held responsible. For its indifference to the sanctity of human life and for the excruciating deaths it facilitated, Amazon must pay. It must vow never again to do business that peddles in the deaths of its customers.
The loved ones of our earliest decedent-plaintiffs pleaded with Amazon to stop selling the SN that killed their precious brother, sister, child; Instead Amazon kept selling SN to more innocent people. Our clients could not save their loved ones, but maybe they could save someone else’s. These families we represent treated Amazon with far more grace than it deserved, and Amazon responded by shrugging its shoulders and digging its heels in, continuing to sell the SN that killed over two dozen of our deceased clients. Now, it’s us that Amazon has to answer to.
Sources:
[1] Sarchiapone, Marco, et al. “Controlling Access to Suicide Means.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 8, no. 12, 7 Dec. 2011, pp. 4550–4562, www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/12/4550/htm, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8124550.
[2] Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (n.d.). Attempters’ Longterm Survival | Means Matter Basics | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/means-matter/means-matter-basics/attempters-longterm-survival/
[3] Yip, Paul SF, et al. “Means Restriction for Suicide Prevention.” The Lancet, vol. 379, no. 9834, June 2012, pp. 2393–2399, www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60521-2/fulltext, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(12)60521-2.
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2013–2023. In Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/yrbs/dstr/pdf/YRBS-2023-Data-Summary-Trend-Report.pdf
[5] Department of Health & Human Services. (2021). Protecting Youth Mental Health The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory. In Department of Health & Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-youth-mental-health-advisory.pdf
[6] Simon OR, Swann AC, Powell KE, Potter LB, Kresnow MJ, O’Carroll PW. Characteristics of impulsive suicide attempts and attempters. Suicide Life Threat Behav. 2001;32:49-59
[7] Williams CL, Davidson JA, Montgomery I. Impulsive suicidal behavior. J Clin Psychol. 1980;36:90-94.
[8] Coppersmith DDL, Ryan O, Fortgang RG, Millner AJ, Kleiman EM, Nock MK. Mapping the timescale of suicidal thinking. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2023;120:e2215434120.
[9] Kleiman EM, Turner BJ, Fedor S, Beale EE, Huffman JC, Nock MK. Examination of real-time fluctuations in suicidal ideation and its risk factors: Results from two ecological momentary assessment studies. J Abnorm Psychol. 2017;126:726-738.
