New report: Legal firms chasing demand for marijuana-related advice

herb-2915337_640Pot is hot in the legal field. According to a new report, law firms are scrambling to keep up with demand from clients seeking advice regarding marijuana legalization.

In a special report, The Recorder at Law.com offers a wide-ranging update.

“There is just too much business to be had for these firms to ignore this,” Law.com reporter Cheryl Miller says in a 15-minute “Legal Speak” interview. “We have 33 states and the District of Columbia now where some form of cannabis is legal, and there’s such a demand for legal guidance from all these businesses that are sprouting up in response.”

Miller says clients dealing in areas such as real estate and employment law need legal advice to keep up with the rapidly changing marijuana market.

The federal-state conflict remains a major issue, she cautions. Banking regulation or cross-border travel particularly into Canada are examples of problem areas.

But firms such as Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Bradley Arant Boult Cummings are encountering high demand.

Miller says, “These lawyers are finding that it’s a natural outgrowth of strong employment practice, a strong real estate practice or a strong transactions practice or a strong litigation practice, and they’re having their existing clients come to them, and that leads to more business down the line.”

Cannabis the focus of new law practice

marijuanaA Los Angeles-based law partner from a prominent firm is launching a cannabis-centered practice, a signal that marijuana has become big business.

“Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is formally launching a cannabis practice in the latest sign that Big Law views this once-illicit market as a serious growth opportunity,” reported Bloomberg Law’s Big Law Business.

The practice will draw on the expertise of more than 12 partners from six offices, the site explained.

“At least a dozen other large law firms have launched cannabis industry practices with cannabis now legal for recreational use in 11 states and the District of Columbia. The firm said another 33 states permit its use for medical purposes,” Big Law Business reported.

Some analysts predict that the marijuana market will grow to $75 billion in the next 21 years, the article noted.

 

California marijuana retailer sued by former chief financial officer

Image: MedMen Chief Executive Adam Bierman as reported by Los Angeles Times. Photo Credit:  Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times.

Image: MedMen Chief Executive Adam Bierman as reported by Los Angeles Times. Photo Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times.

MedMen, a major marijuana industry operator in California with 1,243 employees, faces a lawsuit by its former chief financial officer, the L.A. Times reports.

“As California’s marijuana industry works to project an image of mainstream respectability, one of its best-known companies has come under attack by a former insider,” the newspaper reports.

MedMen Enterprises Inc. is trying to bring pot sales into the mainstream by providing sleek, comfortable stores in high-profile locations, and its strategy often is said to emulate the Apple store model.

The marijuana retailer is being sued by its former chief financial officer, James Parker, “who alleges the Culver City firm forced him out for objecting to a variety of alleged misdeeds at the company, whose stock became publicly traded last year.” A MedMen official denies the allegations.

Parker’s suit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court following his departure from the firm on Nov. 5.

“After earlier rounds of private funding, MedMen went public last May through a reverse takeover — MedMen bought an existing Canadian public company — that enabled MedMen’s stock to be listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange,” the L.A. Times reports. “Although California and more than two dozen other states allow medicinal or adult recreational use of marijuana, cannabis remains illegal under U.S. federal law and thus the major U.S. stock exchanges will not list cannabis firms that operate in the United States.”

Courts Monitor publisher thinks that the newly emerging cannabis industry can learn a thing or two from the alcohol industry

Sara Corcoran is correspondent, contributing editor, and founding publisher of the National Courts Monitor & California Courts Monitor.

Sara Corcoran is a correspondent, contributing editor, and founding publisher of the National Courts Monitor & California Courts Monitor.

Sara Corcoran, the Courts Monitor publisher, thinks that the newly emerging cannabis industry can learn a thing or two from the alcohol industry. For example, as the repeal of alcohol prohibition turns 85 years old, the feuds between the “beer and wine” crowd and the “distilled spirits” companies could easily be repeated as cannabis regulation takes shape amid conflicted industry sectors. She is published at CityWatch LA, the regionally prominent Los Angeles-based opinion-and-politics website here.
 

Judge: Florida’s ban on smokable medical marijuana is unconstitutional

 

Photo credit: Orlando Weekly, 5/2/18

Photo credit: Orlando Weekly, 5/2/18

A state-imposed ban on smokable medical marijuana is unconstitutional, a Florida judge has ruled.

Leon County circuit court Judge Karen Gievers on June 5 upheld her May 25 ruling, ending a stay in this back-and-forth dispute.

“The state’s Department of Health had filed an appeal of Gievers’ original ruling, which automatically put it on hold,” The Associated Press reported. “Even with the stay being lifted, smokable medical marijuana will not immediately be available for sale at treatment centers.  That’s because the Department of Health must come up with rules for cultivation and distribution, which could take several months.”

Orlando Weekly noted that an appeals court had temporarily blocked a Tampa businessman from growing marijuana as he sought to prevent a relapse of lung cancer. The 1st District Court of Appeal had reinstated a stay of Gievers’s May 25 ruling. The circuit court’s ruling had cleared Joe Redner to grow his own marijuana for a treatment known as “juicing,” Orlando Weekly reported.

 

Criminal records cleared for some Californians convicted on pot charges

Those convicted of marijuana-related infractions could receive a clean slate in California, based on a trend in some jurisdictions.

“Thousands of people with misdemeanor convictions for marijuana possession dating back 40 years will have their criminal records cleared, the San Francisco district attorney’s office said Wednesday,” The New York Times reported in January. “San Diego is also forgiving old convictions,”

National Public Radio reported, “Nine states now have laws related to expunging or reducing marijuana convictions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures but marijuana is still illegal under federal law. And not everyone in California is high on the idea of legalization. Jill Replogle, of member station KPCC, reported earlier this month that ’73 percent of cities and counties in California currently ban commercial cannabis businesses.’”

But a few communities are seeking to erase criminal records for those convicted on marijuana charges. The New York Times noted, “George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney, said his office would automatically erase convictions there, which total about 3,000. An additional 4,900 felony marijuana charges will be examined by prosecutors to determine if they should be retroactively reduced to misdemeanors. San Diego has identified 4,700 cases, both felonies and misdemeanors, that will be cleared or downgraded.”

RICO law used to target marijuana businesses

herb-2915337_640An anti-mobster law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, has emerged as a tool to fight marijuana-related businesses, including a case in Massachusetts citing “pungent odors” caused by consumption of the substance, among other negative effects.

Bloomberg reports, “While pot remains illegal under federal law, Massachusetts voters approved medical marijuana consumption in 2012 and recreational use in 2016; the latter will kick in next year. The drug is legal for at least one of the two purposes in 29 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. But that doesn’t mean everybody wants a weed business next door. That’s why the burgeoning $6 billion marijuana business in the U.S. should view the RICO suits as serious threats, says Sean O’Connor, faculty director of the Cannabis Law and Policy Project at the University of Washington School of Law. Even if all the litigation fails, he says, ‘it could have its intended impact.’

“A lawsuit against Healthy Pharms in Cambridge, Mass., argues the company “would operate in flagrant disregard of the federal law that categorizes cannabis as a controlled substance every bit as illegal as heroin or cocaine.”

A similar lawsuit, a nearly 3-year-old suit in Colorado, is scheduled to go to trial in July, reports Marijuana Business Daily.

“This is an existential threat to the industry,” said Brian Barnes, an attorney with Cooper & Kirk law firm, according to the MBD.

Valerio Romano, an attorney for one of the Massachusetts defendants, said “the real impact of RICO suits could be to simply scare entrepreneurs into quitting the marijuana business.”

Deep-Dive Story Outlines Lawsuits, Pesticide Issues For Marijuana

Why don’t we have much data on how much pesticide weed smokers are being exposed to and what effects that exposure might be having on them? Photo Credit, Slate report, 4/20/16

Why don’t we have much data on how much pesticide weed smokers are being exposed to and what effects that exposure might be having on them? Photo Credit, Slate report, 4/20/16

It turns out that marijuana consumer seek the same “organic” and pesticide-free products that consumers seek in other agricultural products. The Slate magazine website has published a deep-dive into some of the legal and consumer issues facing the fast-growing legal marijuana business, including how the gap between federal and state laws can create an odd lack of health studies and other efforts. In particular, the piece looks at how pesticides impact pot products.

Says the Slate story of pesticides: “… this is an issue that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of, thanks to a series of recalls, lawsuits, and front-page exposes that have highlighted the gravity of a growing pesticide problem in the pot world. In the past year, Colorado has made 19 recalls of pot products after quarantining more than 100,000 plants that regulators feared had been treated with unapproved pesticides. In June, the Oregonian found abnormally high levels of pesticides on nearly half of the pot products sold in state dispensaries. Those pesticides included a common roach killer, half a dozen human carcinogens, and a fungicide that allegedly turned into hydrogen cyanide when heated. This March, the Emerald Cup (an outdoor cannabis competition) announced that it would tighten its contamination rules after a large percentage of entrants failed pesticide tests.”

Read the piece here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/04/there_s_a_clean_natural_weed_movement_but_it_can_t_call_itself_organic_here.html

RICO Lawsuits Shape Legal Marijuana Landscape

A budtender pours marijuana from a jar at Perennial Holistic Wellness Center medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, July 25, 2012. Photo Credit, International Business Times report, 3/25/16

A budtender pours marijuana from a jar at Perennial Holistic Wellness Center medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, July 25, 2012. Photo Credit, International Business Times report, 3/25/16

It’s not exactly news that litigation can have serious impact even if it gets dismissed or dropped. And the International Business Times has a truly cautionary tale out of Colorado. The story is about how recent court victories set net legal milestones but the legal marijuana industry has a long way to go.

Part of the story details how one man lost his business in litigation that never even made it to the discovery phase. The marijuana dispensary owner was doing well, says the IBT, but “… when he made arrangements in 2015 to move to a nearby location and expand his operation to include recreational marijuana sales, the Holiday Inn located next door to the new spot pre-emptively sued Olson as well as the owner of the property he was going to occupy, his bank, his bonding firm, his accounting company and others associated with his business, alleging the marijuana shop would be a detriment to the hotel’s business. The affiliated companies were eventually dropped from the suit once they either severed ties with Olson or reached cash settlements with the hotel. As part of its deal with the landowner, the Holiday Inn purchased the property Olson was going to use. In November, with only Olson left as a defendant, Holiday Inn dropped its lawsuit before the case reached discovery. By that point, Olson, who said he heard a doughnut shop and housing were going to be built on the site, no longer had a dispensary. The lease on his old location had expired and, inundated with legal fees, he couldn’t afford to relaunch his business elsewhere.”

Read the excellent report here:

Marijuana Legalization Movement Just Won Multiple Courtroom Battles, But Will That Be Enough to Quash Future Legal Threats?

California City Remains A Lesson In Pot’s Unintended Consequences

Robert Taft Jr., director of the licensed 420 Central dispensary, with Ocean Grown Jack Herer sativa. “I'm fighting for the patients we have. People want to go to a safe store.” Photo Credit, Orange County Register report, 3/29/16

Robert Taft Jr., director of the licensed 420 Central dispensary, with Ocean Grown Jack Herer sativa. “I’m fighting for the patients we have. People want to go to a safe store.” Photo Credit, Orange County Register report, 3/29/16

Confusion and civil lawsuits abound in the Orange County, California city of Santa Ana over legal marijuana sales –and the fringe shops that may or may not be legal.

Attorney Arthur Travieso is representing a shop called Live2Love and four other unlicensed pot shops in lawsuits against Santa Ana, claiming the city’s lottery process was unfair because it allowed multiple entries by the same individuals, as long they applied and paid a $1,690 fee. Some shops also say they are legal under the state’s medical marijuana law and don’t have to follow city regulations.

The OC Register newspaper also notes that “… Santa Ana police garnered unwelcome international attention after a May raid caught on video showed officers forcing Sky High customers to the ground and eating merchandise. Three officers involved in the raid were charged this month with petty theft and vandalism.” And, you guessed it, that brought more lawsuits.

Read the cautionary tale here: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-709935-shops-pot.html