Suicide Solution Lawsuit: McCollum v. CBS and the Waller Sequel

The Suicide Solution lawsuit, formally McCollum v. CBS, Inc., was a 1985 wrongful-death case in which the parents of a 19-year-old California man sued Ozzy Osbourne and CBS Records, claiming the song “Suicide Solution” had driven their son to shoot himself. Every court to hear the case dismissed it. The trial court threw out the complaint on First Amendment grounds in 1986, the California Court of Appeal affirmed in 1988, and the California Supreme Court declined review that October. A near-identical Georgia suit, Waller v. Osbourne, ended the same way on summary judgment and was affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit.

The Death That Prompted the Suit

John Daniel McCollum, 19, died by suicide on October 26, 1984, in his bedroom in Indio, California. He shot himself with a .22-caliber handgun. When his body was found the next morning, he was still wearing headphones connected to a stereo that was still playing. McCollum had a history of alcohol abuse and what the court record described as serious emotional problems.¹

One detail complicated the family’s later theory of the case. At the time of his death, McCollum was not listening to “Suicide Solution.” He was listening to Osbourne’s live album Speak of the Devil.¹

What the Family Alleged

Jack McCollum, Geraldine Lugenbuehl, and the estate of John Daniel McCollum filed suit on October 25, 1985, in Los Angeles Superior Court. The defendants included CBS Records, Ozzy Osbourne, Jet Records, bassist Bob Daisley, and the late guitarist Randy Rhoads. The complaint raised negligence, product liability, intentional misconduct, and a claim under California Penal Code section 401, which prohibits aiding or encouraging suicide.¹

The family’s core theory was that the music, lyrics, and production techniques on “Suicide Solution” created an “uncontrollable impulse” to commit suicide, and that hidden audio elements described as “hemisync” sound waves made the listener more susceptible. Attorney Thomas T. Anderson claimed that computer analysis and an equalizer revealed hidden lyrics inside a 28-second instrumental passage, sung at one-and-a-half times normal speed and urging listeners to “get the gun and try it / Shoot, shoot, shoot.”²

The defendants denied the hidden-lyrics theory outright. Osbourne’s attorney, Michael O’Connor, said his client denied “absolutely” the presence of any concealed messages, and CBS attorney Douglas Abendroth said the company “unequivocally does not place anything in its records in the nature of an intentional hum.”²

The Trial Court Dismissal

On August 7, 1986, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Cole sustained the defendants’ demurrers on every cause of action, without leave to amend. He ruled that the song’s lyrics and music were protected expression under the First Amendment and could not form the basis of civil liability. The judge later agreed to hear additional evidence about the alleged hidden audio at a November 1986 hearing, but he signed a final order of dismissal on December 19, 1986.¹²

The Appeal and Why the Case Failed

The California Court of Appeal, Second District, affirmed the dismissal on July 12, 1988, working through each of the family’s legal theories.¹

On the First Amendment question, the court applied the incitement standard from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), under which speech loses constitutional protection only when it is both directed toward producing imminent lawless action and likely to produce such action.³ “Suicide Solution,” the court found, contained no command to immediate action. Lyrics are figurative rather than literal directives, and speech aimed at action “at some indefinite time in the future” does not qualify as incitement.¹

On negligence, the court held that the defendants owed no duty of care to the plaintiffs because a listener’s suicide was not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of releasing a record album. On the intentional misconduct claim and the Penal Code section 401 claim, the court found nothing to suggest the defendants intended anyone’s death or directly participated in the suicide in the way the statute requires. Costs on appeal were awarded to the defendants.¹

The family petitioned for rehearing, which was denied on July 27, 1988. Their petition for review by the California Supreme Court was denied on October 12, 1988, ending the case.⁴

The Georgia Sequel: Waller v. Osbourne

While the McCollum appeal was still pending, a Georgia family filed a nearly identical suit. Michael Jeffery Waller, 16, died by suicide on May 3, 1986, after raising a handgun to his right temple. His father and police reported that Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz album was the last recording the teenager had listened to. Two days before his death, Michael reportedly told his father, “Pop, I believe old Oz has the solution.” His father said he did not understand the remark until he found the cassette in the tape deck after the shooting.⁵

Thomas and Myra Waller sued in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, alleging negligence, nuisance, fraud, and invasion of privacy on the theory that the song’s music, lyrics, and subliminal messages had incited their son’s death. District Judge Fitzpatrick granted summary judgment for the defendants on every count.⁶

The Georgia court’s reasoning tracked McCollum but also addressed the subliminal-message theory directly. Judge Fitzpatrick found the plaintiffs had produced no “reliable, admissible evidence” that any subliminal message directing suicide actually existed in the recording. Setting the constitutional question aside, the court concluded that the link between the album and the suicide was “too attenuated” under Georgia tort law, and that the suicide itself was a superseding act that broke the chain of causation. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed without a written opinion, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.⁶⁷

What the Song Was Actually About

“Suicide Solution” appeared on Osbourne’s 1980 debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. The title is a play on words: “solution” refers to a liquid mixture, not an answer. The lyrics include “Wine is fine but whiskey’s quicker / Suicide is slow with liquor / Take a bottle, drown your sorrows / Then it floods away tomorrows.”⁸ Osbourne has described the song as a reflection on his own severe alcoholism during the recording of the album, saying in 2020 that he “was drinking myself to an early grave.”⁹

In a television interview during the years of the lawsuits, Osbourne said the song was about “the dangers of alcoholism: Alcohol will kill you just like any other drug will.” He called the allegations against him “just a terrible case of misinterpretation.”¹⁰

What the Rulings Settled

Read together, McCollum and Waller put a hard limit on this kind of lawsuit. Recorded music is constitutionally protected expression. An artist and record label do not owe a legal duty to an unknown listener, and a listener’s suicide is treated as a superseding event that breaks the causal chain a plaintiff would need to prove. Absent direct, intentional incitement of imminent action, a song’s dark themes cannot support a wrongful-death claim, no matter how disturbed the listener or how suggestive the lyrics sound in hindsight. That standard, in practice, is one lyrical content is almost never going to meet.

1
FindLaw. McCollum v. CBS Inc.
2
Los Angeles Times. Suit Alleges Hidden Lyrics in Ozzy Osbourne Song
3
First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU). Incitement to Imminent Lawless Action
4
Studicata. McCollum v. CBS, Inc.
5
Los Angeles Times. Ozzy Osbourne Sued in Georgia Over Suicide
6
Past Paper Hero. Waller v. Osbourne, 763 F. Supp. 1144
7
First Amendment Encyclopedia (MTSU). Music Censorship
8
Songfacts. Suicide Solution by Ozzy Osbourne
9
Rolling Stone Australia. Suicide Solution (1980)
10
Ultimate Classic Rock. Ozzy Osbourne Fan Suicide