Juul e-cigarette

The mother of an 18-year-old who died after using electronic cigarettes for three years is the first to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Juul Labs Inc.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks unspecified damages, including punitive damages, in the death of Daniel David Wakefield, a resident of Pasco County, who died in August 2018.

His mother, Lisa Marie Vail, said her son began using Juul's e-cigarettes, which he believed to be safe, at 15. Now, the complaint said she is "sentenced to a life of sadness."

"Juul claims that its product was intended to help existing, adult cigarette smokers. However, Juul intentionally targeted our youth beginning in 2015 with improper marketing and lies, going so far as to give its product away for free to minors without verifying their age," Vail's San Francisco law firm, Levin Simes Abrams, said in a statement. "In doing so, Juul single-handedly created an epidemic of young users with unprecedented levels of daily nicotine addiction."

Partners Mahzad Hite, Rachel Abrams, Sara Craig and Angela Nehmens filed the suit. The firm claims it has dozens of lawsuits pending against Juul in federal and state courts.

"It is our hope that by bringing cases like that of Daniel Wakefield's to light, the public becomes aware of the serious — and sometimes fatal — hazard of Juul vapor smoke," the firm's statement said. "We also hope our work will trigger meaningful changes in Juul's corporate conduct, including taking responsibility for its role in creating this epidemic."

Juul spokesman Ted Kwong and its lawyer, Austin Schwing of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in San Francisco, did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.

As of Oct. 8, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated e-cigarettes caused 26 deaths in 21 states and nearly 1,300 lung injuries nationwide.

The case adds more legal troubles for San Francisco-based Juul, which also faces government investigations by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys general.

Last month, Juul announced CEO Kevin Burns would step down immediately and the company would suspend all advertisements of its products. The new CEO, K.C. Crosthwaite, comes from Philip Morris USA parent Altria Group Inc., which has a 35% stake in Juul.

More than 60 lawsuits, some of which name Altria as a defendant, alleged injuries in the form of addiction, illnesses like pulmonary disease and seizures or consumer fraud on behalf of classes of consumers. Three school districts, represented by Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles and Wagstaff & Cartmell, sued Juul this month for increased costs associated with the rise in e-cigarette use among their students.

On Oct. 2, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated lawsuits against Juul before U.S. District Judge William Orrick In San Francisco.

The latest lawsuit claims Wakefield was a healthy teenager doing well in school until he began using Juul's e-cigarettes. He became addicted, at one point throwing a mini refrigerator from the top floor of his home because he was unable to vape. Within a year, he ended up in the hospital for three days due to "breathing and lung complications."

He was staying at his father's house when he died in his sleep from "breathing complications."

The lawsuit claims include strict products liability, gross negligence, wrongful death and California's consumer fraud law.