Plaintiffs’ lawyers asking to approve a $45.5 million class action settlement with Altria over Juul cigarettes told a federal judge Wednesday that they received 14.4 million claims, nearly five times what was expected—but about 80% of them were likely invalid or fraudulent.
“The innovation appears to be endless,” Dena Sharp, co-lead plaintiffs counsel in the Juul multidistrict litigation, told U.S. District Judge William Orrick III at a hearing. “It’s likely a combination of a relatively small number of bad factors using the force multipliers of AI and everything the Internet has to offer.”
