Juul Shipped At Least A Million Contaminated Pods, New Lawsuit Says

A former Juul executive is alleging in a lawsuit that the fast-growing startup shipped out 1 million contaminated e-cigarette pods earlier this year -- but did not tell customers or issue a recall. From a report: The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Siddharth Breja, a former senior vice president of global finance who worked at the San Francisco-based company from May 2018 to March 2019. In the lawsuit -- filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California on the same day that Juul confirmed its plans to lay off about 500 people -- Breja claims he was retaliated against for raising concerns about the contaminated shipment. In another instance, Breja says he was worried when the company, in February 2019, wanted to resell pods that were at that point almost one year old. He protested their resale and urged the company to at least include an expiration or "best by" date, or a date of manufacture, on the packaging. The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, "Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods."