A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit in which Ann Altman accused her brother, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, of sexually abusing her throughout their childhood.
US District Judge Zachary Bluestone issued the dismissal on Tuesday. He wrote that over the past year, Ann Altman had failed to appear for an independent medical examination and had missed other deadlines. The court had warned her that doing so would result in dismissal. The suit was filed last year.
The grounds, then, are procedural. The judge pointed to noncompliance with court requirements, not to a conclusion about whether the alleged abuse happened.
That distinction matters. Independent medical examinations are a routine part of civil litigation when a plaintiff claims serious personal harm, since they let the defense have its own expert assess the claimed injuries. Courts treat refusals to take part, especially after explicit warnings, as grounds for ending a case. This is the ordinary machinery of a lawsuit, and the judge's stated reasoning stays inside it.
When the case was filed, Sam Altman, his mother and his brothers shared a statement saying that "Annie has made deeply hurtful and entirely untrue claims about our family, and especially Sam". That denial is the family's position, and the dismissal does not change its status. Nor does it turn the allegations into findings.
For a figure as prominent as the head of one of the best-known AI labs, a personal lawsuit can carry weight beyond the courtroom. A dismissal for missed deadlines closes the docket without a court weighing any evidence. The allegations and the family's denial remain exactly where they stood when the case began.