Three residents of Effingham County, Georgia, filed a damages lawsuit on 6 November 2026 in Effingham County State Court against OpenAI entities, county officials and the county’s development authority over the proposed Project Camellia data center campus, including a count under Georgia’s RICO Act. The allegations are the plaintiffs’ and have not been proven in court.
What was filed and when
WTOC reported on 9 November 2026 that the complaint was filed on 6 November in Effingham County State Court, about 50 pages long with 11 counts. WSB-TV Channel 2 Atlanta, also on 9 November, likewise gave 6 November as the filing date and Effingham State Court as the venue. The plaintiffs, named by WTOC as Dr. Michelle Finch-Mincey, Lehman Mincey Jr. and Raymond Carver, are described as county residents, property owners and taxpayers. They are represented by the Savannah firm Savage, Turner, Pinckney, Savage, Sprouse and Gilluly.
According to WTOC, the defendants include six county commissioners, the county manager, the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority and its chief executive, OpenAI OpCo LLC, Octans GA LLC and Savannah Industrial Development LLC. WSB-TV describes the defendants more generally as OpenAI, the development authority, county officials and other associated parties.
The counts and relief sought
WTOC lists counts including fraudulent concealment, fraud and misrepresentation, civil conspiracy, breach of mandatory legal duties, procuring injury and violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The plaintiffs seek compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs and a jury trial, and treble damages from the defendants named in the RICO count, according to WTOC.
What the complaint alleges about secrecy
The core allegation, as reported by WSB-TV, is a concerted effort to keep Project Camellia from residents until decisions had effectively been made behind closed doors. WTOC reports the following specifics as allegations in the complaint:
- The authority’s chief executive signed a nondisclosure agreement with OpenAI on 27 October 2025, and OpenAI later circulated nondisclosure agreements to other local officials, including the county manager.
- The authority met on 21 July under an agenda that listed only “Project Gateway,” held a closed session of more than an hour and unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding with Octans.
- A deed conveying about 1,440 acres to Octans was signed on 24 July for recited consideration of $10.
- County commissioners adopted Ordinance 2026-352 on 4 August without two required public hearings, presented as a technical correction but allegedly changing the treatment of industrial land uses, including data centers.
WTOC also reports that the complaint quotes an authority director as saying the public would have said “no data center” had the project been put in front of them. That quote is the plaintiffs’ account; it has not been tested in court.
The project as described in the complaint
WTOC, summarising the complaint, describes Project Camellia as a data center campus of four buildings and about 4.4 million square feet on roughly 1,440 acres in the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, to be developed by OpenAI through Octans GA LLC, at a reported cost of about $20 billion. WSB-TV describes it only as a multi-billion-dollar facility. These are figures from the complaint as reported, not independently confirmed numbers.
Responses and related litigation
WTOC reports that county leaders have repeatedly denied the claims and that a spokesperson for the board of commissioners said the board does not comment on ongoing or pending litigation. WTOC says it contacted the authority and OpenAI and had not heard back; WSB-TV reports no responses from the defendants.
The new suit follows a September 2026 suit by the same law firm on behalf of some of the same plaintiffs. WSB-TV describes that earlier case as alleging that the zoning decision did not comply with open-meetings laws and ignored county procedures. WTOC reports that it is pending and that the defendants have filed a motion to dismiss. Attorney Ben Michaud said the case is not an attack on AI in general but a demand for transparency and accountability.
What it means for researchers, universities and research offices
The facts of this case are still allegations, so the points below are editorial reading rather than findings. The dispute is about process: whether confidentiality arrangements and code names used to protect a commercial project are compatible with open-meetings and public-notice duties that bind local government bodies. For institutions, that question is not specific to one company.
- Universities that host or partner on compute facilities with public bodies or development authorities may face the same tension between a counterparty’s confidentiality terms and public-records or open-meetings obligations. Research offices drafting a confidentiality agreement (NDA) with a public-sector party should check what the public body is legally allowed to keep confidential; the worked NDA example shows the clauses at issue.
- Publicly funded access programmes such as the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) and the NSF ACCESS allocation process depend on physical compute capacity somewhere; where that capacity is sited, and how communities are consulted, is a separate question from how researchers obtain allocations.
- Siting is one layer of the broader debate on compute governance, which so far has focused on chips and model thresholds rather than local land use and public participation.
- Sponsored-research terms already require care over what a sponsor may restrict; the same discipline applies to publication delay and review clauses when a project involves an industry partner and a public counterparty.
Nothing in the reported filings concerns a university or research institution, and the outcome of the case will depend on the courts’ reading of the facts and of Georgia law.
Sources
- WTOC, “Effingham County residents sue OpenAI, county officials over Project Camellia data center,” 9 November 2026: https://www.wtoc.com/2026/11/09/effingham-county-residents-sue-openai-county-officials-over-project-camellia-data-center/ (checked 2026-11-14)
- WSB-TV Channel 2 Atlanta, “OpenAI accused of racketeering, conspiracy over Georgia data center plan,” 9 November 2026: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/openai-accused-racketeering-conspiracy-over-georgia-data-center-plan/LPT3VEPZURF4FHC3LDWZEKGIYQ/ (checked 2026-11-14)
