Cannabis laws give landlords a unique amount of control and bargaining power over tenants. This usually translates to above-market rent and one-sided lease agreements. Fighting with landlords is no fun, especially for cannabis tenants who cannot simply relocate to a new property and must deal with their lessor for the life of a license. In
Succeeding in the cannabis industry is not easy, especially in California. Complex regulation, high taxes, expensive real estate, and competition with the black market are just a handful of factors that challenge cannabis businesses. The majority of players lack sufficient reserves and agility to stay in the game. Due to the substantial upfront costs required
Recently, Governor Newsom signed 18 bills aimed to combat the housing crisis in California, including the Tenant Protection Act of 2019. When I spoke at the California Association of Realtor’s Legal Affairs conference a couple of weeks ago, I was asked whether cannabis activity could be considered grounds for “just cause” eviction under the new Tenant
We’ve previously written about some of the pitfalls for landlords to avoid when leasing to commercial cannabis tenants in California. We’ve also recently discussed some relevant issues for landlords created by the state’s near-final regulations. And we’ve also looked at some of the biggest uncertainties remaining after the state issued those regulations. Now that we
We’ve previously written about some of the pitfalls for landlords to avoid when leasing to commercial cannabis tenants in California. We’ve also written about how the state’s recently proposed modifications to its final cannabis regulations could affect licensees and the industry writ large (see here and here). The comment period for those rule changes is
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal Nixon-era law originally intended to combat drug cartels and organized crime. Among other features, it allows average citizens claiming a loss in property value to bring suit for triple damages plus attorney’s fees against any “person” or “enterprise” that has a part in any
We’ve written previously about some common issues landlords run into when leasing to cannabis businesses (see links at the bottom of this article). Now that we’ve seen almost a year’s worth of emergency regulations, and the state has released its proposed final regulations, we’ve also seen a variety of cannabis leasing issues crop up. Here
Almost two years after the passage of Proposition 64, the 2016 California voter initiative to legalize and regulate medicinal and adult-use cannabis, California has begun to finalize its regulations that will govern the largest cannabis market in the country, though that effort has not been without some hiccups and bumps in the road. But, things
The current state of enforcement in California tends to be dominated by headlines about the Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions, the DEA, and the Controlled Substances Act. And for good reason—under the constitution, federal law is the law of the land, and commercial landlords and tenant alike should study federal enforcement guidelines closely. Lease agreements
Last Friday, California released another round of emergency regulations that essentially renewed the existing emergency rules, but with some updates, a fair amount of which affect commercial cannabis leasing. Here are some of the notable ones. “Premises” distinctions defined. SB 94 and AB 133, the statutes enacted in 2017 to implement and refine Prop 64,
