The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that finding marijuana stems in a trash bag does not permit the police to search the house for evidence of a crime. From a legal standpoint this case has interesting implications on when, where, and what police can search. From a more practical perspective, it shows the
Medical marijuana is legal in Montana. Unfortunately, that does not prevent local employers from terminating workers for legal, off-work use of marijuana in the state. In 2010, while already employed by Charter Communications, LLC, Lance Carlson was issued a medical marijuana card under Montana Medical Marijuana Act to treat chronic low back and stomach pain.
In recent posts, we’ve discussed cases where a neighbor to a cannabis grow sued the grower for nuisance, claiming that growing cannabis interfered with the neighbor’s use of their land. See here, here, here, here, and here. These lawsuits relied on the non-cannabis landowner’s claims that the federally illegal cannabis business caused harm because of odor, disruptive
Poor Josephine County. We have been writing on this blog about the southern Oregon county’s mounting frustrations with cannabis, its successive losses in litigation, and its most recent attempt in federal district court to submarine Oregon’s cannabis programs. We immediately identified this lawsuit as a “stunning overreach” and we predicted the county would lose. To
We’ve written extensively about the dos and don’ts of filing cannabis-related state and federal trademarks, and we all know by now that you cannot obtain a federal trademark registration for goods or services that are not lawful pursuant to federal law. But I’ve heard a lot of creative arguments in this space, and have had many
Back in December, we wrote about Murphy v. NCAA (“Murphy”), a case where the State of New Jersey challenged a federal law that bans states from allowing sports gambling. We explained that this case has important implications for state-legal marijuana programs, because it asks whether the Constitution’s anti-commandeering doctrine prevents the federal government from forcing states
Our Oregon lawyers have been fielding many questions regarding a recent civil RICO complaint filed in the federal court in Portland, Oregon styled as McCart v. Beddow et al. This case was filed on the heels of the Safe Streets decision out of Colorado that we discussed recently, and was clearly heavily influenced by that decision. You
On June 7, 2010 Dish Networks LLC fired Brandon Coats for violating the company’s drug policy after a random drug test showed Coats was using marijuana. Coats is a quadriplegic who has been confined to a wheelchair since he was a teenager. He started working at Dish in 2007 as a telephone customer service representative. In
Attorney Irwin Ravin was arrested on October 11, 1972, and charged with violating Alaska Statute 17.12.010 for possessing cannabis for personal use. Before trial in front of the Alaska District Court, Ravin attacked the constitutionality of AS 17.12.010 by a motion to dismiss asserting that the state had violated his right of privacy under both the
California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, allowing qualified patients to cultivate and use marijuana for designated medical illnesses and conditions. Though this permits cannabis cultivation and use in California, anything related to cannabis remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Angel Raich, a qualified medical cannabis patient, who was provided cannabis for medical use
