University of Texas students receive settlement in Juul class action lawsuit

AUSTIN (KXAN)- Some Juul users are receiving hundreds, even thousands of dollars as part of a $300 million class action settlement. Juul and Altria, which owns 35% of Juul, were accused of misleading customers about the product’s addictiveness and health impacts. They were also charged with unlawfully marketing to minors.

Juul agreed to a settlement in 2022, but the Altria settlement, which was needed to kickstart the payouts, was not approved until earlier this year. As of March, more than 14 million claims had been filed. Claims for the approximately 842,000 eligible Juul customers began to be verified starting this month.

After deducting for fees, taxes and contingencies, eligible users were entitled to a total of approximately $202,000,000. The amount that plaintiffs could receive varies in part by how many receipts demonstrating proof of purchase a Juul user could provide.

According to the terms of the settlement, claimants who did not provide receipts for their purchases had their recovery capped at $300.

Users on social media have been sharing their large sums on TikTok this week, after many received their payouts on Monday. 

TikTok user, Liz Foremann, shared her PayPal screenshot with $7,680 from the settlement to the Justin Bieber song “Life Is Worth Living”. In the video she wrote, “whoever told me to sign up for the Juul class action, I love you so much.” 

On the University of Texas campus, some students are finding themselves with a lot of unexpected extra cash. Cydni Ehlers, a senior at the university, is one of those students. On Monday evening, she received a deposit of $288.03 in her Venmo account.

Ehlers said she completely forgot she ever filed for the suit. She even found out about the suit itself through TikTok. A TikTok user named @Thelawyerangela, a lawyer on the app who focuses on class action suits, had posted about how to sign up in March 2023. Ehlers said the money in her Venmo account was a very welcome surprise.

“As a college student, it’s really hard to make money. So, it was really nice to see the $300 in my Venmo,” Ehlers said.

Ehlers explained that she didn’t know how detrimental the e-cigarette could be to her health when she started using it. She said she only used the product because she “thought it was cool” and saw other people doing it. 

Now, she feels like there's some justice for her younger, more impressionable self.

“It’s good that we’re now getting paid back for spending all that money when we were just children and we didn’t know that Juuls were so bad for us," Ehlers said.