E-cigarette company Juul knowingly shipped 1 million “contaminated” pods to retailers this year and refused to recall the products or warn consumers, a former executive claimed in a lawsuit he filed against the company this week.
Siddharth Breja, who served as Juul’s senior vice president of global finance in 2018 and 2019, is suing the company for damages, arguing he was “terminated in retaliation” for being a whistleblower.
{mosads}In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Northern District of California, Breja said he was fired after objecting to the shipment and raising concerns about other instances of “illegal and unsafe conduct” that “jeopardized” public health and the lives of consumers.
Juul, which dominates the e-cigarette market in the U.S., has had a tumultuous year battling accusations that it purposely marketed to kids.
Meanwhile, federal health officials are investigating an outbreak of lung illnesses among patients that vaped THC and nicotine products.
In his lawsuit, Breja did not say what the shipped pods were allegedly contaminated with, but he noted they were mint flavored — one of the company’s best-selling products.
After Juul announced over the summer it would stop selling flavored vaping products like cucumber and fruit in stores, demand spiked for its mint-flavored pods.
Burns allegedly pushed suppliers to keep up with the demand, resulting in “compromised” quality control measures, according to Breja.
“The focus was on producing and selling mint-flavored pods at any cost, even when the product turned out not to be safe,” his lawsuit says.
Breja said that when he protested the decision to sell contaminated pods, he was told by a supervisor that issuing a recall would lead to billions of dollars in lost sales. He added that in the previous month he had raised concerns in a staff meeting about the company’s intent to resell expired pods that had been returned by a distributor.
In response, Burns allegedly said: “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fo’s, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”
Breja alleges that he was fired on March 21 after he continued to raise concerns.
A Juul spokesperson called the Breja’s claims “baseless.”