School systems in Tennessee have joined in a massive tort against Juul Labs for alleged marketing to youth.
NASHVILLE — A total of 18 school systems in the U.S. state of Tennessee have joined in a massive lawsuit against e-cigarette maker Juul Labs for marketing their products to kids.
This is one of the largest developments on the litigation front since the major tort actions against the country’s largest e-cigarette manufacturer started popping up over five years ago. According to Nashville Public Radio’s coverage on the matter, these school districts expect settlement money from Juul Labs to help fund anti-vaping programs and counter the use of e-cigarettes on school property by students. The latest district to join the litigation from Tennessee includes Knox County Schools. In the middle of the state, school systems in Putnam and Warren counties have also signed on to the lawsuit.
“We really look at this as school systems having a lot of — the non-legal term I would use is — a lot to gripe about,” said attorney Chis McCarty of the Lewis Thomason Law Firm in Memphis and Knoxville. McCarty is the lead attorney on the Tennessee case against Juul.
“We didn’t hire principals to be the vaping police,” McCarty says in a statement to Nashville Public Radio, via the report. “We’d rather them concentrate on other things.”
Other school districts in Middle Tennessee are passing on the lawsuit. However, it doesn’t cost a district anything to join in the complaining class for the litigation. It’s just that lawsuits take time and energy to put down on paper all the ways electronic cigarettes have been a resource drain on schools. School districts across the country have been filing lawsuits for several years. This sort of litigation is further being consolidated in a federal court in the U.S. District Court for the Nothern District of California. This is a similar strategy how an Ohio court managed to contain opioid litigation.
