September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Suicide prevention is often discussed on an individual level – recognizing warning signs, reaching someone in crisis, or getting a loved one help. But prevention is ultimately a shared responsibility, and requires active participation by the systems and institutions that can put vulnerable people at risk. This year, we reflect on the role that tech companies and the law play in suicide prevention – along with the law’s capacity to evolve.  

We represent dozens of families who have lost their loved ones to suicide. These cases are among the most heartbreaking we handle, because no legal win will ever bring back a child whose life has been lost. But when we meet with grieving parents, they tell us they just want to make sure no other parent has to go through what they have.  

As a firm that holds tech companies accountable when they have harmed our clients, we litigate cases where a tech product contributed to, caused, or facilitated a person’s suicide. Earlier this year, we filed our case against Discord on behalf of the Taylor family, who lost their 13-year-old son Jay to suicide after he became the victim of a sadistic child abuse sex cult, 764. As we argue, Discord knew 764 was born on and proliferated on its platform.  And for the past 5 years, we’ve been in litigation with Amazon, for knowingly selling and marketing a suicide chemical with no household use to vulnerable people. We represent 29 families who lost their loved one to suicide by sodium nitrite purchased on Amazon.  

Back in February 2026, we won a landmark 9-0 appeal in Washington Supreme Court (WASC) in our cases against Amazon. The decision wasn’t just a win for our clients – it undid an antiquated 100-year-old “suicide rule” in WA state that Amazon argued should automatically shield it from liability. Amazon insisted it was entitled to sell a suicide chemical, manipulate algorithms to link it with instructions for self-harm, and delete its warnings – and that the law would protect its right to do so. Amazon was wrong. The Court held that whether suicide was a foreseeable consequence of Amazon’s conduct is a question of fact for a jury.  

But the decision went even further. Throughout the decision and concurring opinions, justices directly confronted outdated assumptions about mental health and suicide underlying the old rule – including the idea that suicide can be reduced to a voluntary, rational choice.  

Suicide prevention is a shared responsibility. Companies cannot ignore the ways their products may create, facilitate, or amplify risks to vulnerable people just because the ultimate injury is suicide. The law itself has a role to play too – it must evolve alongside our understanding of mental health and ensure that suicide does not automatically erase accountability for the conduct that preceded it.   

Below are some of the passages we found to be the most powerful and forward-thinking.

Gonzalez, J.

“In essence, the plaintiffs allege Amazon’s recommendation algorithm marketed the tools to commit suicide to their vulnerable loved ones.

Algorithms are not neutral. Vera Eidelman, The First Amendment Case for Public Access to Secret Algorithms Used in Criminal Trials, 34 GA. ST. U. L. REV. 915, 923-25 (2018). The algorithms were created by Amazon to sell more products. The plaintiffs’ allegations suggest that Amazon’s algorithm marketed despair and a tortured death. I see no difference between marketing these products together online from putting sodium nitrite, antinausea drugs, scales, and the suicide manual together on the shelf. If the plaintiffs can prove what they have pleaded, a rational trier of fact could find this was not merely negligent but reckless or intentional.”

“In my view, it is, at least, negligent for a product seller to sell a dangerous product when it knows it is being used by vulnerable people the way sodium nitrite was being used here without taking reasonable steps to prevent that use.”

“It is, at the least, negligent to market a suicide kit to vulnerable people.”

Mungia, J.

“Our prior cases have allowed tortfeasors to escape liability where their actions were a cause of a person’s suicide, except in limited circumstances. These holdings were premised on the rule that an entity will not be liable for an injury that a person voluntarily inflicts on themselves. These antiquated cases held that individuals “committed suicide,” a phrase that we now understand as harmful because it suggests a person committed a culpable act or moral wrong if they ended their life. This old understanding of suicide came with the notion that individuals were blameworthy for dying this way—that they faced a choice between right and wrong, and chose the latter. Rooted in this misconception of suicide and mental health, we haveheld that dying by suicide is, by legal definition, a “voluntary willful choice.” Under a proximate cause analysis, this meant that suicide is a superseding cause that breaks the chain of causation and insulates a tortfeasor from liability. In my view, those decisions were wrong. The decision to end one’s life is not a “voluntary” superseding act under our legal standards.

To be voluntary under the law, a decision must be made free of coercion or duress. While a decision to die by suicide is a choice in the sense that one chooses a course of action to end or prevent suffering, it is made under duress in response to overwhelming pain or pressure. The pain may be physical, mental, or emotional, and may stem from a variety of sources, but it is pain, nonetheless. There is a substantial amount of philosophical, psychological, and legal debate surrounding death by suicide, and it is not this court’s role to choose sides. However, it seems to me that people who choose to end their lives believe in that moment that they do not have any meaningful, life-affirming alternative. Thus, the decision is not “voluntary” in the legal sense of the term.”

“Further, the suicide rule should be overturned. The legal underpinnings of the rule have eroded, and the rule is incorrect and harmful. When a consumer uses a seller’s product to end their life, a product seller is not automatically insulated from liability but is instead subject to Washington’s general contributory fault scheme.”

“Dying by suicide is not a voluntary choice in the legal sense of the term. Instead, it is a decision that is made under duress. In the vast majority of cases, a person’s decision to end their life is connected to physical, mental, or emotional pain—they are experiencing more pain than they believe they can cope with. People who choose to die by suicide do not see any viable, life-affirming alternative. A decision made under duress is not a voluntary one.”

“While the decision to end one’s life is a choice, it is not voluntary as that term is used in the law. The decision is a highly individualized one. However, a common experience for people who choose to end their life is that they do not see any viable alternative. The pain or pressure they face is coercive in nature.

The belief that deciding to die by suicide is a voluntary, willful choice is an outdated notion.”

“Altogether, the suicide rule should be overturned because (1) its legal underpinnings have eroded and (2) it is incorrect and harmful. The characterization of suicide as a “voluntary willful choice” as a legal matter is based on outdated understandings of mental health and was situated in our old contributory fault regime.”

Read the full decision and concurring opinions below.