Juul reaches settlements covering thousands of lawsuits

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN and MATTHEW PERRONE

Embattled vaping company Juul Labs has reached settlements covering thousands of lawsuits over its e-cigarettes, which in recent years became a scourge in schools and communities nationwide.

Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Juul said that it has secured an equity investment to fund it.

Buffeted by lawsuits, Juul announced hundreds of layoffs last month and bankruptcy appeared increasingly likely as it secured financing to continue operations.

The e-cigarette maker faced more than 8,000 lawsuits suits brought by individuals and families of Juul users, school districts, city governments and Native American tribes. This week’s settlement resolves most of those cases, which had been consolidated in a California federal court pending several bellwether trials.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-59fb698543959c226aa420975e30beb2?utm_source=Connatix&utm_medium=HomePage

[Evolve Dammit]

1. I hope the penalties will deter them. Nasty products.

[cyclonefence]

2. Does anybody know what the basis for the lawsuits was?

I read the cited article, and it seemed like the complaint was that Juul was attracting underage "smokers" rather than what they say they do, which is to provide an alternative for cigarette smoking adults, that the flavors in Juul are attractive to children.

I agree that those are all bad things, but the article mentions compensation to victims--does that mean that Juul turned kids on to real cigarettes? We don't know the size of the settlements, but given the number of entities suing, it seems like real money must be involved.

Not to defend Juul--I loathe those things--is this really multi-million (I assume) type damage?

[Trenzalore]

3. Now the kids can go back to smoking camels

[EAB]

4. Bit of history

Before JUUL blazed onto the market, the experimentation and use of combustible cigarettes had been in a decades' long decline (so e-cigarettes can't take credit for that, though their manufacturers often try). In fact, youth were losing interest in electronic smoking devices before JUUL came along because, quite frankly, they weren't that good.

JUUL was a quantum leap in electronic smoking devices in terms of convenience, hideability, coolness and also addictiveness (as they figured out how to get nicotine to hit the blood faster). It went to market with little concern for safety and with youth friendly advising. The 'youth vaping epidemic' was really JUUL for the first couple of years, but then it started facing regulatory headwinds, and other products filled the gap and it's been 'whack a mole' ever since.

What JUUL did was demonstrate to the world a whole new model of addicting folks to nicotine.