As New York cannabis retail licensing proceeds at a snail’s pace, countless businesses are openly selling marijuana products out of unlicensed stores and smoke shops. It is obvious to anyone walking through New York City that the city has been unable to reign in these “businesses.” After allegedly sending cease and desist notices to those
Well, it looks like cannabis RICO lawsuits are not going to happen any time soon. As an update to this post we wrote in 2020, the Ninth Circuit has just affirmed the dismissal of two RICO claims brought by a cannabis business owner. Background of Shulman v. Kaplan As a quick recap, Plaintiff Francine Shulman
Cannabis litigation is growing as the industry matures. Recently, we’ve seen a suit related to false advertising, but we’re also seeing more traditional business litigation around partnership issues and contract breaches. In Los Angeles, the repeal of Prop. D and implementation of Measure M caused a lot of industry infighting, some of which led to
We regularly cover intellectual property disputes on the blog, and the Edible Arrangements v. Green Thumb Industries trademark infringement case is one we covered two years ago when filed. Since then, this case appears to have been moderately active, with the parties engaging in the usual discovery and related motion practice. However, things did take
This Thursday, December 8, 2022, the City of Los Angeles will open Phase 3, Round 2 of storefront retail licensing. The City will only accept applications from verified social equity applicants. It will select winners via a “triple-blind” lottery, awarding up to 100 retail licenses. But a guy in Michigan is trying to prevent the
We’ve anticipated this for a while, but a recent lawsuit indicates that certain marijuana company mislabeling antics are getting called out, regarding false advertising. One recent lawsuit heralds a potential new wave of litigation. The lawsuit The plaintiffs are two California consumers who sued a California marijuana company, DreamFields Brands, Inc. and Med for America
We’ve written plenty about cannabis arbitrations before, and why these proceedings may make more sense for your situation (see links at the bottom of this post!). But when you need fast, injunctive relief, a prior agreement to arbitrate can potentially be disastrous. Arbitration is much slower than other litigation to get started — even though
The U.S. Court of International Trade (“CIT”) issued a recent opinion that indicates the import or export of “drug paraphernalia” to or from states where cannabis is legal represents an exception to the federal ban imposed by the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”). Under 21 U.S.C. § 863(d), “drug paraphernalia” is broadly defined as: any equipment,
What is the TCPA again? For years past, we regularly counseled our clients about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) because the cannabis industry, like many others, were being targeted for TCPA violations which were sometimes legitimate, sometimes not. For those who are still unfamiliar, the TCPA is a federal statute that was passed in
Our litigation team regularly attends mediations both before a lawsuit is filed and while a lawsuit is pending. We’ve covered mediation in the past, but for those who are unfamiliar, mediation is essentially a conference in which parties sit down together, generally with a neutral third party, to see if they can resolve cannabis litigation
