A judge said on Monday that he is prepared to dismiss most of the claims brought by a former employee of an e-cigarette design and manufacturing company. The employee alleged that he was fired in 2019 for raising concerns about safety conditions and refusing to lie to customers about the company's products during testing.
In October 2020, Adam Temkin filed a lawsuit against Vaporous Technologies Inc. in the Los Angeles Superior Court. According to their website, Vaporous Technologies Inc. is the first ever in-house brand agency in the electronic cigarette industry.
In a preliminary ruling issued on Monday, Judge Bruce G. Iwasaki indicated that he is leaning towards granting a defense motion to dismiss the charges brought by Temkin, which include allegations of retaliation against a whistleblower, wrongful termination, breach of contract and implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, negligent hiring, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. The judge is scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday before issuing a final decision.
The defense did not challenge Temkin's accusations of unfair business practices and violations of state labor laws.
Temkin, aged 47, was hired as the sales and business development manager for Vaporous Technologies in January 2019. According to court documents, he successfully achieved his sales targets and secured Acreage Holdings, one of the most renowned companies in the electronic cigarette and vaping industry, as a client.
According to a lawsuit, when Temkin took a batch of medicine bottles to the cannabis testing lab Cannasafe for heavy metals testing, his work environment changed. According to his lawsuit, Temkin received the testing results from Cannasafe in February 2019, and while some of the bottles passed the test, many others had lead levels ten times above the legal limit.
Acreage Holdings informed Temkin that the sample tubes he sent them did not pass lead tests. The plaintiff immediately reported this issue to their supervisor, who told Temkin to inform the customer that Vaporous Technologies had never passed the test before.
Temkin claims that he alerted the management of the company that their electronic cigarettes failed to pass Cannasafe's testing. According to the plaintiff's lawsuit, Vaporous Technologies developed a new model of e-cigarette but continued to sell older versions that were suspected to be contaminated with lead to marijuana oil companies.
According to a lawsuit, in May 2019, another supervisor began communicating directly with Acreage Holdings and instructed Temkin to stop sending emails to clients. Temkin started to feel that he was destined to fail and worried about being fired, causing him to experience anxiety and depression, states his court documents.
The lawsuit alleges that Temkin was excluded from meeting with potential new clients and was not allowed to participate in trade shows where he had planned to meet with potential clients.
According to a lawsuit, Vaporous Technologies failed to pay Temkin his salary in August 2019, and shortly thereafter he was terminated.
The judge has withheld most of his provisional ruling to address the issue of Temkin's claim to be a whistleblower.
The judge wrote that Temkin had confused reporting illegal activity with the normal steps that companies take to ensure the safety and integrity of their products. "If a product is found to be non-compliant and reported to a superior, that is what should happen. Notification is not whistleblowing activity. On the other hand, if a company knows that a product is unsafe or does not meet its guarantees but still distributes it, disclosure to law enforcement or senior management may be protected by law. Of course, the information must be true and not just speculation.
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