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HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Walking around a gas station in Madisonville you see Mike Gorby in a video he's now using in court. He says it was taken back in May 2016. Gorby, a smoker of more than 30 years, was in the process of quitting cigarettes but had a e-cig in his pocket.
"I was just walking around outside having a cigarette and suddenly I felt a sharp pain on my right leg and I looked down and I saw what looked like vapor puff out of my pocket and then flames," says Gorby.
That video caught the explosion. Gorby says the rechargeable battery in his e-cig caused the explosion, causing serious burns to his leg and his right hand. Now he and his attorney Sydney Meriwether have filed a lawsuit against the smoke shop that sold him the merchandise and the major electronic company that produced the batteries. The two say there was no warning label on the battery mentioning that there could possibly be an explosion if overcharged.
"It's a lot of chemical compounds actually that are being not included into the internal components of the battery and so they know that there are chemicals that would stop that oxygen interaction and they are not using it," says Meriwether.
Now the pair and working to spread awareness and are hoping that warning labels will soon be put, on all e-cig batteries.
"If cap users were aware that they needed to be careful with how they are charging these batteries and warned that there is a possibility that if you over charge the battery that it could explode, then that's what we need to know, that's what users of these batteries need to know," says Meriwether.
We did reach out to the smoke shop and to the manufacturer for a comment but were unable to reach them.