“Clinicians and researchers have found that people are much more likely to attempt suicide if they learn about methods, become convinced it is the right thing to do and have the means,” attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote in court records. “Amazon provides the means.”

On its website, the plaintiffs alleged, Amazon had closely cropped the photo of the chemical bottle. That meant the product page didn’t have warnings about the danger of ingesting it and information about how to reverse its effects.

The website did, however, feature sponsored ads for another chemical that can be used as an antidote if the substance were ingested, according to the lawsuits.

Amazon’s speed of delivery was also a point of concern. In many cases, the individuals received the chemical days after placing an order and died days later.

“When a person is having suicidal thoughts, limiting fast access to methods by which to die can make the difference between life and death, making the fact that (this chemical) can be sold and delivered overnight with Amazon Prime a grave concern,” seven members of Congress wrote in a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in 2022.

The company sees it differently.

In response to the congressional letter, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, said no regulations prevent the sale of the chemical in the U.S., and that Amazon had not received any directives from regulatory bodies to stop the sale.

“At Amazon, we take customer safety seriously,” Huseman wrote. “All products sold in our store must comply with applicable laws and regulations and we have a robust product safety program to protect our customers.”

Two years later, there are still no federal regulations banning the sale of the chemical in its high purity form in the U.S. — though some are under consideration. California passed a law last year restricting the sale of the chemical for those under 18 years old and banning the sale entirely in concentrations greater than 10%. New York passed similar legislation for individuals under 21.

Other countries, including the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, have taken steps to ban the sale, and some online retailers in the U.S., including eBay and Etsy, have stopped selling it altogether.

Many of the families who lost loved ones after they ingested this chemical were hopeful Amazon would do the same once they heard how its product had been used, according to the attorneys representing them in court. Instead, Amazon declined to take action for several months.

Annette Gallego, whose 18-year-old daughter Ava Passannanti took her own life in February 2021, left several reviews on product pages, according to court records. But Amazon never posted those reviews, telling Gallego via email that the content violated company guidelines.

Amazon said in court documents it removed product reviews that included the word “suicide” to discourage users from making a purchase with that in mind. But, because Gallego’s reviews and others like it had been deleted or never posted, the chemical had an artificially high rating on Amazon’s storefront, the lawsuits alleged.

Meredith Mitchel, whose son Ayden Wallin died in August 2020 when he was 16, exchanged 56 messages with Amazon’s customer service department in the months after Ayden’s death. As described in court records, a representative assured her the company would open a product safety investigation. But the chemical remained on sale for another two years.

Ruth Scott, who was the first plaintiff to sue Amazon for the sale of this product after her 27-year-old son Mikael died in December 2020, also reached out to Amazon’s customer service team after finding a receipt on Mikael’s phone.

In her case, the lawsuits allege, a representative once responded: “With all my heart I am sorry for your loss. But at least your son is now on our God’s hand.”

Scott, who described her son as someone who was “too kind for this world,” said she now spends Mikael’s birthday writing a letter recapping the year.

She keeps those letters in a box in Mikael’s room — the same room where he died and where she now feels closest to him, Scott said in a recent interview with The Seattle Times.

“I’m healing, and the damage is already done (but) it hasn’t deterred me. It just makes me more determined,” Scott said. “I don’t want anybody, anybody to feel this pain.”

Years of litigation

When attorney Carrie Goldberg first heard of Scott’s plight, she sent Amazon a letter. Like Scott and the other families, Goldberg reasoned that Amazon didn’t know how the product had been used.

When Amazon’s attorneys told her they would not be taking the product down, Goldberg switched from believing Amazon was ignorant to believing they were part of the problem.

Now Goldberg, fellow lead attorney Naomi Leeds and Seattle-based attorney Kaitlin Cherf, who is helping to represent Tyler Schmidt’s family, say Amazon has been resistant to providing any information over six cases and months of litigation.

“We are over two years into litigating this and we’re still waiting,” Leeds said. “Amazon is just fighting tooth and nail to keep the vault locked up.”

Amazon declined to comment on the allegations that it had been reluctant to share more information in court.

Only one of the six cases has moved into the discovery process, and none is close to a legal conclusion. Amazon has filed motions to dismiss five of the six lawsuits; it has not yet responded in court to the case filed last month.

In two cases, the judge denied Amazon’s request to dismiss the claims against it and ruled the lawsuits should move forward. In another, a judge dropped all of the claims against Amazon. In yet another, a judge dropped some of the claims and allowed others to proceed.

Because there is a high bar for dismissing claims so early on, Thomas Murphy, a defense attorney with Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith & Davis LLP who has studied Amazon product liability cases in the past, said Amazon “has been decently successful so far” in these lawsuits.

In each case, it will be difficult to prove causation, he said. For example, the plaintiff’s attorneys may have to prove that Amazon’s email reminding the shopper what they had left in their cart was the reason they decided to go back and click purchase.

Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco, agreed that these are “hard cases to win,” but said the litigation could have an impact even if there isn’t a definitive ruling.

“If you open the door to Amazon being on the hook for removing warnings about products that people post in the reviews, that goes for other products as well,” she said.

So does the idea that consumers could sue retailers for products that others use to die by suicide, Reiss continued. “If the courts say this specific claim loses, but we are opening the doors, it’s already a big deal.”

Two years after Goldberg started litigating Scott’s case against Amazon — the first in the series of lawsuits — she is about to face the same judge.

King County Superior Court Judge Josephine Wiggs, who handled the start of Scott’s case, is now presiding over the case Goldberg filed in March, representing the parents of three more people who died after ingesting the same chemical.

When Goldberg was first in front of Wiggs in early 2022, she argued that allowing Amazon to continue to sell this chemical would lead to more deaths.

Five months after the case was filed, Donald Spadel Jr. died the same way Mikael Scott had. Spadel, who went by Donny and lived in New Jersey, was 32.

Two months after that, 23-year-old Parker Rose died.

The fate that Goldberg had predicted came true.

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Warning signs of suicide

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or have concerns about someone else who may be, call the the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You will be routed to a local crisis center where professionals can talk you through a risk assessment and provide resources in your community. The more of the signs below that a person shows, the greater the risk of suicide.

—Talking about wanting to die

—Looking for a way to kill oneself

—Talking about feeling hopeless or having no purpose

—Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain

—Talking about being a burden to others

—Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs

—Acting anxious, agitated or recklessly

—Sleeping too little or too much

—Withdrawing or feeling isolated

—Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge

—Displaying extreme mood swings

Source: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

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