American Kratom Association Lawsuit: Cases, Claims, and GMP Program

Lawsuits involving the American Kratom Association fall into two categories: cases where the AKA is a defendant accused of negligently certifying kratom vendors and misleading consumers about safety, and one case where the AKA was the plaintiff, suing the FDA over a proposed international kratom ban. The defendant cases include at least two wrongful death actions in Georgia and a consumer class action; the plaintiff case, filed in 2021, succeeded in extending a public comment period.

The Pope Wrongful Death Case in Georgia

The most detailed claim against the AKA sits in Dana Pope and John Pope v. Optimized Plant Mediated Solutions, et al., Case No. 22-A-1536, filed in Cobb County State Court. The parents of Ethan Pope, who died of mitragynine intoxication after consuming kratom, sued the AKA alongside manufacturer O.P.M.S.¹

The complaint alleges the AKA breached a duty to the decedent by operating its Good Manufacturing Practices certification program negligently. Specifically, plaintiffs say the AKA failed to ensure O.P.M.S. complied with state law while continuing to hold the company out publicly as a compliant, qualified vendor. Causes of action against the AKA include negligence, strict liability for warnings and design defects, negligent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy.¹

The theory matters because it treats an industry trade group as legally responsible for the safety representations behind its certification seal, not just the manufacturer that made the product.

The Devera Conspiracy Case

Devera v. Advanced Nutrition (Wyoming), LLC et al., No. 23-A-4832, was filed in the same Cobb County court in October 2023. The plaintiff alleges a “broad conspiracy” among kratom manufacturers, distributors, and the AKA to illegally import, adulterate, and sell kratom. The complaint accuses the defendants of using opaque corporate structures to evade liability and asserts alter ego and veil-piercing theories to reach individual defendants behind the companies.²

As of May 2026, the case remained active. No public rulings on motions or discovery have been reported.² Devera is notable because it expands the legal theory well beyond failure-to-warn: it treats the AKA as a co-conspirator rather than a negligent third party.

The Consumer Class Action Over Safety Claims

A separate class-action complaint accuses the AKA of pushing consumers to rely on “false, misleading, and materially incomplete medical claims” about the safety and benefits of kratom, naming the organization alongside kratom manufacturers and distributors.³ The claim targets the AKA’s public communications about kratom rather than its certification program specifically, though the two overlap in practice.

When the AKA Was the Plaintiff: The FDA Case

Not every case has the AKA on the defense side. In August 2021, the AKA sued the FDA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the agency sought public comments on a proposed international ban of kratom through the World Health Organization. The case, American Kratom Association v. Xavier Becerra, et al., Case No. 1:21-cv-02118-BAH, sought to force the FDA to extend the comment window.⁴ The suit succeeded in extending the deadline to August 24, 2021.⁵

The GMP Certification Program at the Center

To understand what the wrongful death plaintiffs are actually arguing, look at the AKA’s Good Manufacturing Practice Standards Program. It is a voluntary vendor certification initiative that charges participating businesses $5,000 annually. The AKA promotes certified companies as “qualified vendors,” and their products carry what functions as the association’s seal of approval.⁶

A December 2023 Tampa Bay Times investigation challenged the program’s rigor. Auditor Dana Jolie, who has experience in food and dietary supplement manufacturing, said that when he was hired by kratom company Super Speciosa to conduct an AKA audit, the company’s quality manager asked him to disregard portions of the audit checklist dealing with how the product was actually made. Jolie refused to conduct a partial audit and stopped working for the program in September 2023. “The consumer goes out there and thinks they’re being regulated,” Jolie said. “But it isn’t real.” Super Speciosa remained listed as a qualified vendor on the AKA’s website as of that December.⁶

The same investigation found that products from five brands the AKA had designated “Kratom Consumer Champions” — Choice Botanicals, Golden Monk, O.P.M.S., Remarkable Herbs, and Whole Herbs — were linked to at least seven fatal overdoses in Florida where kratom was the only substance cited by medical examiners.⁶ The Pope complaint keys directly on this pattern: it alleges the AKA continued to hold O.P.M.S. out as compliant while failing to ensure the company followed state law.

In April 2024, the AKA issued a consumer warning against enhanced 7-OH products with concentrations exceeding 2% of total alkaloid content, calling them a “significant health risk.” Attorneys litigating wrongful death cases against kratom companies called the warning “a step in the right direction” but said the AKA remained “complicit in supporting bad actors” in the industry.⁷

How the Wider Kratom Verdicts Shape the AKA’s Exposure

The AKA is not a defendant in most kratom cases, but the results in those cases test the legal theories that could be turned back on the trade group. Three outcomes stand out.

An $11 million default judgment entered in July 2023 by Judge Donald Middlebrooks in Florida against Grow LLC (doing business as The Kratom Distro) and owner Sean Michael Harder in the wrongful death of Krystal Talavera, a 39-year-old mother of four who died in June 2021.⁸
A $2.5 million jury verdict in July 2023 in Coyne v. Society Botanicals, LLC, Case No. 20-2-00874-08, in Cowlitz County, Washington. The jury found the company and owner Wendianne Rook liable on all four counts — negligence, defective design, breach of the implied warranty of merchantability, and violation of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act — in the death of Patrick Coyne, awarding $1.4 million in non-economic and $1.1 million in economic damages. It was the first kratom wrongful death case to go to trial in the United States.⁹¹⁰
An $8.75 million class action settlement in In Re Botanic Tonics Litigation, Case No. 3:23-cv-01460-VC, in the Northern District of California, over claims that the company’s “Feel Free” kratom-containing tonic was deceptively marketed. The settlement required the company to add label warnings about kratom’s habit-forming potential and serious health risks. The AKA was not a party.¹¹

As of mid-2026, kratom lawsuits had not been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation proceeding or formal mass tort. Cases continue as individual filings across multiple states, with new wrongful death and product liability complaints filed throughout 2025 and 2026.² Plaintiffs’ attorneys have expanded beyond standard failure-to-warn claims to include conspiracy, fraud, and veil-piercing arguments. The Devera case is the clearest example of that shift reaching the AKA itself.

1
Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. Case Law Monitor, December 2022
2
Mayer Brown. The Emerging Kratom Litigation Landscape and Implications for Similarly Situated Manufacturers
3
Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. OPMS Kratom Lawsuit
4
Courthouse News Service. AKA v. Becerra Complaint
5
STAT News. FDAs Kratom Ban Would Harm the Public and Damage the Agencys Credibility
6
Tampa Bay Times. Deadly Dose Investigation – American Kratom Association
7
Wetherington Law Firm. Trial Lawyers and American Kratom Association Reach Agreement on Something
8
NBC News. $11 Million Awarded to Family of Woman Who Died Taking Kratom
9
The News Tribune. Kratom Wrongful Death Jury Verdict in Cowlitz County
10
mctlaw. A $2.5 Million Jury Verdict in the First Kratom Wrongful Death Trial in the US
11
Feel Free Class Action Settlement. In Re Botanic Tonics Litigation Settlement