Power to the People: Kern County Measure D Will Give Voters Control of Medical Cannabis
CaliforniaMedical MarijuanaUncategorized February 20, 2020
Last week, I presented oral argument to the Fifth District Court of Appeal in support of the people’s right of referendum. Long story short, the Kern County Board of Supervisors banned medical marijuana dispensaries in 2011, the people protested via referendum petition, and to this day the County has refused to comply with the legal…
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Litigation Update: JustCBD Files Motion to Dismiss Class Action Lawsuit
HempUncategorized November 24, 2019
A couple of months ago I wrote a “Hemp/CBD litigation forecast.” (See here.) One topic of that post was the rise in class actions against Hemp-CBD companies and I noted the consumer class action complaint filed against JustCBD in the Southern District of Florida, Case No. 0:19-cv-62067-RS. The gravamen of the complaint is that JustCBD…
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Cannabis and Insurance Litigation
Uncategorized November 8, 2019
Recently, Jonathan Bench wrote about the importance of insurance coverage for your hemp or recreational marijuana business. His first article provided the basic anatomy of such policies and his second discussed the importance of product liability insurance. This post highlights recent litigation in which insurance is at issue, or ought to be. Hemp insurer seeks…
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Early last week, we covered Governor Brown’s Executive Order No. 19-09 banning flavored vaping products. That ban is six months in duration, and it covers all flavored tobacco and nicotine vaping products, as well as marijuana products flavored with non-marijuana terpenes. As expected, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) quickly…
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Cannabis Litigation: Another Blow to the Illegality Defense (Kennedy v. Helix TCS, Inc.)
Uncategorized October 2, 2019
Yes, cannabis is still federally illegal. But no, that doesn’t mean cannabis businesses should act as if federal law doesn’t exist. It does, and it probably applies to any cannabis business. Nevertheless, our cannabis attorneys often hear claims that federal law doesn’t apply. In fact, two questions that I’ve heard numerous times are: If the…
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Seizures at School: Arizona Federal Court Says IDEA Protections Do Not Extend to Medical Cannabis Use
Medical MarijuanaUncategorized September 29, 2019
We’ve written a lot about cannabis and the Controlled Substances Act. From immigration to waste dumping. From the Fair Labor Standards Act to the STATES Act, our articles run the gamut. Not long ago we wrote about a decision by the Second Circuit that may force the DEA to re- or deschedule marijuana after writing…
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Litigation Update: Who Decides Whether You Can Ship Hemp Through Idaho?
HempUncategorized September 17, 2019
Regular readers know that we are in the midst of presenting a 50-state series analyzing how each state treats hemp-derived cannabidiol (“Hemp CBD”). Recently we covered Idaho, which we neatly summarized as “probably the worst state in the country to get caught with hemp.” The article explains why this is so in detail. Among the…
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In following the progress of the first-ever cannabis patent litigation case, United Cannabis Corporation v. Pure Hemp Collective, Inc., the parties are now in a special phase of patent litigation called “claim construction.” Claim construction is specific to patent cases, and it’s the process of deciding what the various terms of the asserted…
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Hemp/CBD Litigation: Curaleaf Hit With Federal Class Action Lawsuit Alleging Securities Violations
HempUncategorized August 9, 2019
Just a few weeks ago, Curaleaf Holdings (“Curaleaf”) announced that it would pay $875 million, mostly in stock, to acquire a Chicago based cannabis company, Grassroots. (See here.) This followed news in May that Curaleaf had reached a nearly $1 billion all-stock deal with one of Oregon’s biggest cannabis companies, Cura Partners, Inc. (See here)….
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Oregon Hemp Litigation: Failure to Pay for 10,000 Pounds of Seeds Alleged
HempOregonUncategorized August 5, 2019
As we predicted, litigation concerning hemp production continues to rise. At this point, it is the rare week that we do not see at least one new lawsuit on the state or federal docket– and that is just in Oregon. Given the extraordinary growth in hemp licensure and cultivation nationwide, it seems the courts will…
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