Staten Island MTA Employee Sues Hemp Tea Company After Failed Drug Test

A former Staten Island, New York MTA bus driver is suing the makers of a weight loss tea after the product led to a failed drug test and subsequent demotion, according to an SI Live report. The former driver, Roy Hunter, filed his lawsuit against Michigan-based Total Life Changes over its raspberry flavored “Broad-Spectrum Hemp THC Tea Product,” which is advertised to assist in weight loss and contain zero percent THC.

Hunter was hired in 2012 as an MTA driver and last July failed a random drug test and was demoted to bus cleaner. As part of the demotion, he was subject to 64 drug tests over an eight-month period and passed each one. In April he sent individual tea packets for testing and found the product contained THC, which, he claims in the lawsuit, led to his positive drug test.

His attorney, Scott Richman, of Richman Law Firm PLLC, called the lawsuit “a classic case of a multi-million dollar company putting profits over people.”

“The misrepresentations on the packaging of the Total Life Changes tea product were clear, unequivocal, misleading, and with the sole intention to induce prospective purchasers to buy their product. … Now, instead of taking responsibility for what they did, Total Life Changes would rather take the position that these people ‘got what they paid for.’ We will not let that stand.” – Richman to SI Live

The lawsuit is filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The product is also subject to a class-action lawsuit over THC levels, which the lawsuit claims are “false, deceptive and/or misleading.” Total Life was also the recipient of a Federal Trade Commission warning letter in April 2020 for social media posts made by the company’s business representatives that “unlawfully advertise that certain products treat or prevent” COVID-19.