Mindbloom Lawsuit: Ward Wrongful Death and WSJ Defamation Suits

Mindbloom, the telehealth company that ships at-home ketamine therapy for depression and anxiety, is fighting on two fronts. In North Carolina, the parents of a 27-year-old client who died of ketamine toxicity have sued the company for wrongful death. In Delaware, Mindbloom itself has sued the parent of the Wall Street Journal for defamation over an article the company says falsely tied it to Matthew Perry’s overdose death. The two Mindbloom lawsuits, filed months apart, put the company’s clinical practices and its public reputation in front of separate courts at the same time.

The Ward Wrongful Death Suit in North Carolina

John and Linda Ward filed suit in Pitt County Superior Court on October 21, 2025, on behalf of their son Phillip Ward, who died on October 29, 2023. The cause of death was ketamine toxicity in the setting of hypertension, with a toxicology report showing 9.3 mg/L of ketamine in his blood, a lethal concentration.¹

The complaint, case number 25CV008485-730, names four defendants: Mindbloom, Inc.; Enovex Pharmacy, LLC, the Glendale, California compounding pharmacy that shipped the ketamine tablets; physician assistant Elliot Sebastian Skwerer, who wrote the prescription; and Dr. Ijaz Rasul, Skwerer’s supervising physician. It brings five causes of action: negligence, product liability for negligent design, product liability for failure to warn, gross negligence, and unfair and deceptive trade practices under North Carolina law.²

How Phillip Ward Got the Prescription

According to the complaint, Ward signed up for Mindbloom in March 2023. He disclosed depression, hypertension, tachycardia, and substance abuse, and he had been receiving medically supervised Spravato treatments twice a week in Florida before enrolling.³

On April 4, 2023, a Mindbloom clinician conducted a video consultation and noted that Ward “will need a therapist before approval” and required a letter from his previous provider confirming his Spravato treatments had ended. The suit alleges neither condition was ever satisfied before Mindbloom approved him. He was then prescribed compounded ketamine troches, sublingual lozenges that dissolve under the tongue, which Enovex Pharmacy shipped to his home.⁴

Missed Appointments and an Unused Blood Pressure Cuff

The complaint describes a pattern of missed safety checkpoints in the months before Ward’s death. He missed a scheduled video consultation on June 28, 2023. Between July and October 2023, his account showed multiple failed subscription payments. On October 18, 2023, eleven days before he died, he missed another mandatory appointment and was charged a $150 no-show fee. Mindbloom, the suit alleges, did not halt his access to ketamine or trigger a clinical review.¹

Ward was given a blood pressure cuff as a safety measure, according to the complaint, but was never required to submit readings. After his death, the cuff was found still in its original packaging. An autopsy also revealed an enlarged heart and pulmonary edema.⁴

Claims Against the Clinicians

The suit alleges Skwerer ignored red flags in Ward’s history, prescribed without an adequate physical or psychiatric examination, and kept authorizing prescriptions after Ward repeatedly missed mandatory appointments. It alleges Dr. Rasul, as supervising physician, failed to implement or enforce policies to keep high-risk patients from being prescribed and provided no meaningful oversight of Skwerer’s practice.¹

The Wards’ attorney, James A. Morris Jr. of the Morris Law Firm, called Mindbloom’s business model itself negligent, saying Ward’s medical history “should have immediately disqualified him from unsupervised, at-home anesthetic use.”³

Mindbloom’s Response

Founder and CEO Dylan Beynon issued a statement on October 23, 2025, denying the allegations. “The Mindbloom team and I were saddened to learn of Phillip’s death,” he said. “The facts will bear out that Mindbloom provides the highest quality of clinical care backed by the largest peer-reviewed clinical studies in ketamine therapy history and proven out across hundreds of thousands of treatments, and the care provided to Phillip by Mindbloom was no different.”⁵

The Ward family has demanded a jury trial and is seeking compensatory, wrongful death, survival, and punitive damages. As of mid-2026, no rulings, motions, or trial date have been reported publicly.

Mindbloom’s Defamation Suit Against Dow Jones

On June 2, 2025, Mindbloom filed a defamation suit against Dow Jones & Company, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, in the Superior Court of Delaware, case number N25C-06-016 PRW.⁶

The suit targets a WSJ story published on August 16, 2024, headlined “People Are Injecting Ketamine at Home,” with the sub-headline “Matthew Perry overdosed on anesthetic that Mindbloom is sending by mail.”⁷ Mindbloom says Perry was never a client and had no relationship with the company, and points out that the WSJ had reported one day earlier that Perry got his ketamine from a drug dealer.⁸

What the Complaint Alleges

Mindbloom alleges the story was primarily handled by an undergraduate intern, Kayla Yup, under editor Patrick McGroarty, and quotes a pre-publication message from the reporter stating, “We aren’t suggesting that Mindbloom was affiliated with his case.” It also alleges the reporter accessed a private, invitation-only Facebook support group for Mindbloom clients without disclosing her identity or affiliation, and that two clients quoted in the article have said their experiences were “completely distorted.”⁶⁹

Damages and the WSJ’s Response

Mindbloom seeks at least $4 million in lost profits, $35 million in lost enterprise value, and $350,000 in expenses fighting the alleged libel, plus punitive damages. On its own blog, the company describes the total claim as $88 million. It says it sent multiple written retraction requests between August 2024 and May 2025, all declined.⁹⁶

A WSJ spokesperson called the suit “a misguided, meritless attempt to place blame for its alleged losses on the Journal” and said, “We will mount a robust legal defense against the feeble, unsupported allegations in Mindbloom’s complaint.”⁸ As of mid-2026, no motions to dismiss or subsequent rulings have been publicly reported.

In the same complaint, Mindbloom asserts that across all of its treatment sessions, the company has never had a reported patient overdose under its care.⁶ The Ward suit directly challenges that assertion.

The Regulatory Context

Ketamine is FDA-approved only as an anesthetic. When clinicians prescribe it for depression or anxiety, they do so off-label. Because ketamine is an approved drug, compounding pharmacies can legally fill individual prescriptions, and the Ward complaint characterizes that route as a way for at-home providers to bypass the FDA’s standard drug approval process.³

On October 10, 2023, days before Phillip Ward’s death, the FDA issued a public warning about compounded ketamine, stating it had not evaluated the safety, effectiveness, or quality of such products and emphasizing that at-home use lacks the onsite monitoring for sedation, dissociation, and vital sign changes required for the FDA-approved formulation, Spravato.¹⁰

The ability to prescribe controlled substances by telehealth without an in-person exam rests on temporary pandemic-era DEA flexibilities, which have been extended through December 31, 2026.¹¹

Other At-Home Ketamine Suits

The Ward case is not the only wrongful death claim against an at-home ketamine provider. In September 2025, Rhonda Coplen filed suit in Wyoming federal court against Sage Psychiatry Services and nurse practitioner Krista Blough over the February 2025 death of her daughter, Tranyelle Harshman, who fatally shot her four children and then herself in Byron, Wyoming. The complaint alleges Harshman was in a dissociative state caused by ketamine she had been permitted to self-administer at home without supervision; an autopsy confirmed ketamine in her system.¹²

A separate suit was filed against Better U, another telehealth ketamine provider, over the March 2026 death of Tricia Anne Dewey, a 41-year-old paralegal from Pound Ridge, New York. Her family alleges Better U prescribed ketamine while knowing she was taking Xanax, and that she died from the combined intoxication after her first dose.¹³

As of mid-2026, these remain individual civil suits rather than a consolidated class action or multidistrict litigation, though legal analysts have said the litigation could evolve into a class action or MDL as more cases are filed.¹⁴

1
Psychedelic Alpha. Ward v. Mindbloom Complaint
2
WNCT. Pitt County Lawsuit Targets Online Ketamine Provider for Death
3
WCTI12. Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Against Ketamine Program for Greenville Man’s Death
4
Behavioral Health Business. Mindbloom Faces Wrongful Death Lawsuit Involving At-Home Ketamine Overdose
5
WITN. Ketamine Provider Responds to Lawsuit Filed for Death of Greenville Man
6
Courthouse News Service. Mindbloom v. Dow Jones Complaint
7
Wall Street Journal. People Are Injecting Ketamine at Home
8
Courthouse News Service. Wall Street Journal Denies Falsely Linking Ketamine Therapy Provider to Matthew Perry’s Death
9
Mindbloom. Wall Street Journal Mindbloom Matthew Perry Lawsuit News
10
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Warns Patients and Health Care Providers About Potential Risks Associated With Compounded Ketamine
11
Healthcare Law Insights. DEA Extends Telemedicine Flexibilities for Ketamine Prescribing
12
Powell Tribune. Wrongful Death: Mother of Tranyelle Harshman Sues Local Ketamine Provider
13
KTVQ. Mother of Wyoming Woman Who Killed Herself and Kids Files Lawsuit Against Ketamine Prescriber
14
Lawsuit Tracker. Ketamine Lawsuit