Representing School Districts and Public Entities in the Fight to Stop the Vaping Crisis
We are actively seeking and filing claims for school districts and other public entities affected by the widespread vaping epidemic. If your students, district, or other public entities have been affected, contact us for more information about how we can help.
The Lawsuits
The lawsuits seek injunctive relief and an abatement remedy to combat the e-cigarette epidemic, which has severely interfered with normal school operations. The districts are also seeking compensatory damages to provide relief from the districts’ financial losses as a result of students being absent from school and the costs of arranging outreach and education programs regarding the risk of vaping.
Many districts across the nation are struggling to protect their students from the health hazards of vaping and JUUL must be held accountable for creating this widespread burden. Studies have found that the 2018 spike in nicotine vaping was the largest for any substance recorded in 44 years. It’s time for JUUL to make some changes and do what’s right.
National JUUL Litigation Team
We are leaders in representing public entities in this type of litigation against big companies like JUUL.
Members of our consortium currently serve in leadership roles, including as Public Entity Plaintiffs’ Co-Lead Counsel representing school districts throughout California, in litigation against JUUL Labs, Inc. Together, our team is working with lawyers representing school districts from across the nation as they seek to hold the e-cigarette manufacturer accountable for creating a youth vaping epidemic on school campuses.
Federal Judge Validates District Claims
JUUL Labs Inc. and other key defendants in the litigation filed motions seeking to dismiss claims filed by school districts, asserting that school district claims related to JUUL were not legally viable.
However, the federal judge overseeing the national JUUL litigation recently ruled that public nuisance and negligence claims filed by school districts and other government entities against JUUL Labs, Inc. and other key defendants are legally valid claims and may proceed.
According to the Court, school districts and other government entity plaintiffs “sufficiently allege that JLI substantially interfered with public health, impacting their school districts and communities.”
“Vaping is an epidemic and, as community leaders, we’re taking the lead to protect our students and future leaders. The hidden dangers of vaping are triggering a health crisis and we’re taking action.”
Comments from Olathe school board president Shannon Wickliffe on JUUL lawsuit.
The Court stated the school districts plausibly “allege damages as a result of an ongoing and persistent deceptive marketing campaign and intentional targeting of youth that led to expenses that municipalities and school boards could not have reasonably anticipated to incur. JLI’s misconduct allegedly forced school districts to devote and divert resources to address the youth e-cigarette crisis and incur costs related to counseling, training, educating, or disciplining students, as well as increased costs for physical modifications to schools and disposing of hazardous waste.”
Furthermore, the Court explained: “The government entity complaints include plausible allegations that JLI had control over the conduct that created and maintained the youth e-cigarette crisis, such as directly and intentionally marketing to youth, distributing free samples to young audiences, presenting misleading information to students in schools, and preserving the availability of the popular mint flavor while ostensibly removing “kid-friendly” flavors from the market. These allegations match the type of public nuisance allegations that have proceeded past the pleadings stage in cases addressing opioids and firearms.”
Clients
We currently represent school districts all across the country, including Los Angeles Unified School District which is the second largest school district in the nation.
Youth Vaping Crisis in America
There has been a resurgence of youth nicotine addiction as JUUL has been intentionally and deceptively marketing its products to underage customers.
“The skyrocketing growth of young people’s e-cigarette use over the past year threatens to erase progress made in reducing tobacco use. It’s putting a new generation at risk for nicotine addiction.”
Robert Redfield, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
After years of litigation and regulation to help stop youth nicotine addiction, youth smoking rates dropped dramatically from 28% in 2000 to 7.6% in 2017. These campaigns against youth tobacco use were a huge success until JUUL’s e-cigarette products entered the market.
In 2018, 4.9 million middle and high school students said they used tobacco products, with 3.6 million of those students using e-cigarettes. The number of youth e-cigarette users increased by 1.5 million from 2017 to 2018.
Effect on Schools
Several school districts have now joined together and filed lawsuits against JUUL for their role in fueling the e-cigarette epidemic that has invaded schools and diminished the learning environment across their Districts. School districts already have limited funds and they should not have to allocate money from their budgets for educational campaigns, prevention and treatment for student vaping. In all of these cases, we have seen school districts having to divert critical funds away from learning and programs for struggling students to vaping outreach programs and enforcement efforts, such as vape detector devices and video surveillance.
Vaping not only hurts individual learning, it affects the learning environment of all students.
E-cigarette use has also caused many students to have health issues, which results in an increased number of absences. This increase in student absences means there has been a reduction in district state funding.