Two more families sued Character.AI in Texas court

The design

On 9 December 2024, two families filed a joint complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, captioned A.F., on behalf of J.F., and A.R., on behalf of B.R., v. Character Technologies, Inc., naming Character Technologies and Alphabet-affiliated defendants. The docket shows the complaint brings claims for strict liability, negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, along with a request for injunctive relief. The filing attorney, Matthew Bergman, is the same attorney who filed Garcia v. Character Technologies in Florida seven weeks earlier, and is, by his firm's own description, the founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which describes itself as a firm focused on litigation over harm from social media and AI products.

What the evidence says

The complaint's claims are, at this stage, allegations, not adjudicated facts; the case had not reached a ruling on a motion to dismiss as of this writing. What the docket does establish independently is procedural: two minors, identified only by initials, are named as the harmed parties through their guardians, the case was assigned to Judge Rodney Gilstrap in the Marshall Division, and it invokes diversity jurisdiction on a products-liability theory, the same jurisdictional basis used in the Florida case.

What it asks of people

Filing a near-identical claim in a second jurisdiction, through the same law firm, is itself a legal strategy: it tests whether more than one state's tort and consumer-protection law will treat a chatbot the same way, and it adds a Texas-specific claim, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, that the Florida suit did not include. For a reader, this shows litigation against a single company can proceed on different legal theories in parallel, with outcomes that need not match.

Privacy and safeguards

No court has yet ruled on the merits of this complaint's claims, so no privacy or safety practice named in it has been independently confirmed or rejected. The Deceptive Trade Practices Act claim, specific to this filing, puts at issue whether the company's representations to users and parents about safety were misleading, a question the Florida product-liability claim does not directly ask.

• Does a second, near-identical lawsuit in a different state make an allegation more credible, or only test a different legal theory against similar facts?
• What does a Deceptive Trade Practices claim require that a straightforward negligence claim does not?
• How would a reader find out whether this case settles, is dismissed, or proceeds to trial, once initial press coverage fades?

A second lawsuit filed by the same firm is evidence of a broader legal campaign, not evidence that either court will find the underlying allegations true. The claims here remain unresolved and untested.