3 min read
Litigation Risk: Why Lawsuits, Not Regulation, Will Shape the Industry's Future
The vaping industry faces an existential threat from litigation—thousands of lawsuits, billions in settlements. The regulatory system shapes which products can be sold. The litigation system shapes which companies can survive.
Juul has paid over $2 billion in settlements. The legal theories that succeeded against Juul—defective design, marketing to youth, failure to warn—are generalizable to the entire vaping industry. **The litigation risk is existential: a single class-action judgment could bankrupt a company. The regulatory system determines which products are legal. The litigation system determines which companies survive—and the litigation is far less predictable than the regulation.**
