New Jersey Lawsuits Add to Crop of Injury Litigation Facing E-Cigarette Maker Juul
The e-cigarette maker is accused of marketing its products toward teenagers.
August 14, 2019 at 04:28 PM
4 minute read
Two personal injury lawsuits against Juul Labs have landed in federal court in Trenton, joining a growing number of cases lodged against the company on behalf of people using its e-cigarettes.
A 20-year-old Juul user with the initials P.O., who claims he became addicted to nicotine from using the company’s products, filed a failure-to-warn suit Tuesday against Juul in U.S. district court in Trenton. Also Tuesday, a 19-year-old Juul user’s products liability suit against the company was removed from Middlesex County Superior Court to U.S. district court. Both suits were filed by Domenic Sanginiti of Stark & Stark in Princeton.
The latest suits follow at least a dozen personal injury cases filed against Juul on behalf of users around the country in recent months. Such suits have been brought in Florida, Pennsylvania, California, New York, Alabama and West Virginia. Juul has petitioned the Judicial Panel for Multidistrict Litigation to consolidate those cases, but the panel has not ruled on that application and has not set a hearing date.
Some government entities have gotten into the act of filing suits against Juul, with Lake County, Illinois, filing its own suit Tuesday that accuses the company of targeting young people with its products. In May, North Carolina sued Juul for targeting young people with its e-cigarettes and misrepresenting the potency and danger of nicotine in its products.
The New Jersey suits say Juul is designed to appeal to teenagers. It is a battery-powered device that resembles a USB drive and heats up a nicotine-filled liquid Juul pod, which is sold separately and contains flavors like mango or mint. Juul was designed to eliminate the throat irritation that comes with smoking conventional cigarettes and delivers higher concentrations of nicotine per puff than traditional cigarettes and other e-cigarettes, the suits claim.
Plaintiff S.R. claims he began using Juul when he was 16 and that use of the product in his high school was “rampant.” He says he purchased Juul products in local convenience stores and never was told that sales to persons under age 21 were forbidden.
S.R. has given up Juul, but “struggles to function without nicotine. He experiences strong mood swings and bouts of depression from withdrawal. In addition, S.R.’s Juul-induced nicotine addiction led him to smoke traditional cigarettes at 16 years old,” his suit claims.
In addition to Juul, the New Jersey suits name as defendants PAX Labs, a California company that developed Juul but later spun it off as a separate company; Altria Group, which bought 35% of Juul in 2018, and Philip Morris USA, a subsidiary of Altria. The suits claim Juul conspired with others in the cigarette industry to engage third-party spokespersons to downplay the risk of e-cigarettes.
The New Jersey suits bring claims for design defects and failure to warn under products liability law. The suits also brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, wanton and willful conduct, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, intentional misrepresentation and unjust enrichment. The suits seek judgment for unspecified damages and costs of suit.
Sanginiti was not immediately available for comment.
A handful of plaintiff lawyers, including Sanginiti, are advertising for potential clients among Juul users. His firm’s website says, “At Stark & Stark, we are committed to fighting this health hazard and the unethical targeting of underage smokers through lawsuits against the makers of Juul. With our extensive resources and years of litigation experience, our team is fully prepared to take on the creators and owners of Juul to hold them accountable for the teens who have become addicted to nicotine.”
Juul has retained Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to represent it in the products liability suits. Altria and Philip Morris are represented by Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. Marshall King of Gibson Dunn and Edward McTiernan of Arnold & Porter, who removed the S.R. case to federal court, declined to comment.
A Juul Labs spokesman, Ted Kwong, said of the litigation, “JUUL Labs is committed to eliminating combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world. Our product is intended to be a viable alternative for current adult smokers only. We do not want non-nicotine users, especially youth, to ever try our product. To this end, we have launched an aggressive action plan to combat underage use as it is antithetical to our mission. To the extent these cases allege otherwise, they are without merit and we will defend our mission throughout this process.”
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