On Tuesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will personally launch his state’s case against e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs, the first of hundreds of charges against the company to reach trial.
Minnesota is seeking more than $100 million in damages, according to Ellison, who accuses Juul, located in Washington, D.C., of illegally targeting youth to addict a new generation to nicotine. Tuesday morning, the court assembled an eight-woman, four-man jury. It was anticipated that opening comments would conclude in the afternoon.
The majority of Juul’s hundreds of cases have been settled, including 39 with neighboring states and U.S. territories. Not Minnesota, which in 1998 won a historic $7.1 billion settlement against the cigarette industry. In 2020, the state of Minnesota joined cigarette industry behemoth Altria, which formerly held a minority ownership in Juul, as a co-defendant.
Last month, Altria concluded its divestment and reported that its $12.8 billion investment was essentially lost. Yet, it has not abandoned e-cigarettes: A few days later, Altria made a $2.75 billion investment in NJOY, a competitor to Juul in the vaping industry.
Ellison stated in a statement, “We will prove how Juul and Altria duped and hooked a generation of Minnesota adolescents on their products, inflicting both enormous injury to the public and great costs to the State to remedy that harm.” After giving a portion of his opening comments, he expects to turn over the case to attorneys from two outside law firms.
