Wrongful Death Lawsuit to Be Filed Over THC/CBD Labeling Mix-up

As part of the ongoing fallout from Curaleaf’s September CBD and THC label mix-up, a tenth lawsuit is expected in the coming days, according to an Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) report. Unlike the previous nine lawsuits already filed against Curaleaf Holdings over the incident, this one involves an alleged “wrongful death.”

The case will be brought by the family of Earl Jacobe, 78 of Idaho, who, along with his wife, consumed the mislabeled products in late August. This led to a visit to the emergency room, where doctors say he exhibited stroke-like symptoms. Over the next two weeks, Jacobe would take two more trips to the hospital via helicopter, OPB reports.

His family believes the series of events was triggered by the consumption of large amounts of THC in the mislabeled Curaleaf products. The suit will argue it brought him “to the point where he was essentially comatose and then succumbed to an unrelated COVID-19 disease several weeks later,” said Portland attorney Michael Fuller, who is handling the ten cases.

Fuller said his other clients experienced confusion, dizziness, thoughts of death, and psychosis after taking the products. Another serious case involved Michael Lopez, who was admitted to the hospital with stroke-like symptoms and experienced “unnecessary surgery, fear of death,” and psychosis.

“We’re going to have individual trials for each person because each person’s experience and injuries are a little bit different. We’re going to try to settle as many as we can. See, a lot of my clients are elderly, in their late seventies; they have no interest in prolonged litigation.” — Fuller via OPB

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission issued the recall in September for Select-brand CBD tinctures because they contained “undisclosed levels of THC.” The OLCC would quickly issue a second recall for the brand’s THC tinctures as they contained no THC.

Curaleaf had no comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement, “a team member confused two containers during the filling and packaging process, one containing CBD and one containing THC.”

“This resulted in a single batch of CBD tincture being labeled as THC Drops and vice versa,” the company said. “The amount of THC was within the regulatory limit for a normal batch for our THC drops, but we understand that some customers may have consumed multiple doses.”