Search Results: lawsuits filed (33)

Rose Law Group
Border Patrol Agent Bryan Gonzalez was fired merely for verbally expressing frustration with the war on marijuana and voicing support for LEAP

Maybe Frank Zappa was right to ask, “Who are the Brain Police?” Remarks from a Border Patrol agent expressing dissatisfaction with the Drug War — made on the job to a fellow agent, a few feet from the Mexican border — later resulted in the agent’s firing after his remarks were passed along to headquarters.

Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent stationed in Deming, New Mexico, was in his Border Patrol vehicle next to the border when he pulled up to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job, reports Marc Lacey at The New York Times.
If marijuana were legalized, Gonzalez told the other agent, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then mentioned an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), consisting of former cops, judges and prosecutors who favor ending the War On Drugs.
“Now that The New York Times has featured LEAP and the emerging debate in the law enforcement community about ending the ‘war on drugs,’ hopefully this will lead to more sympathetic cops getting in touch with us and joining the movement,” LEAP’s media relations director, Tom Angell, told Toke of the Town on Monday morning.
“I’m already hearing from a lot of news outlets that don’t normally cover LEAP that the Times story caught their attention,” Angell said.

The Marijuana Industry Group has helped the Colorado cannabis business develop into an awesome revenue machine that generates sales measured in the billions. But behind the scenes, MIG is embroiled in dueling Denver District Court lawsuits that pit the organization against Michael Elliott, its former executive director, in a fight that’s witheringly nasty.

Elliot’s complaint maintains that he was fired from his gig in June 2016 due largely to fallout from his rejection of sexual advances from a contract employee with the group. A few months later, he filed discrimination charges against the group with the Colorado Civil Rights Division — a prerequisite to a lawsuit, which was eventually filed in September 2017. But by then, MIG had already sued Elliott, arguing that he’d been sacked for misappropriating funds, among other things, and later retaliated by cooking up a fictional sexual harassment story that he then used in an unsuccessful effort to extort as much as $300,000.

Arno van Dulmen/Shutterstock

If referendum qualifies, city council will be forced to either rescind its ordinance or call a special election
The medical marijuana dispensary ban in Los Angeles may be short-lived.
With plenty of time to spare, medical marijuana advocates on Wednesday filed more than 50,000 signatures in an effort to overturn a recently passed ban on dispensaries throughout the city. Despite a loud outcry from patient advocates, the Los Angeles City Council adopted an outright ban last month on medical marijuana distribution within the city limits.
The ban came after the city failed for more than four years to develop regulations suitable for providing medical marijuana to the tens of thousands of area patients.

Lawyers.com
A Long Beach cop smashes the video surveillance camera at the THC Downtown Collective

City Is Broke, Yet It Pursues Expensive, Futile Marijuana Dispensary Raids, Resulting In $1 Million Lawsuit
The City of Long Beach, California had an estimated deficit of $14 million in 2011. At an August 2, 2011 news conference covering the “fiscal year 2012 proposed budget,” Mayor Bob Foster is quoted as saying, “We have an extraordinary hole to climb out of and as all of you know, the first rule of holes is when you are in one you stop digging, we need to stop digging.”
On June 19, for a medical marijuana collective raid, the local government utilized roughly 14 of its police officers, numerous patrol cars, the fire department, a hospital ambulance, a city official of the Department of Finance (Erik Sund) and an attorney from the City Attorney’s office (Kendra Carney). All were intermittently onsite for an estimated time of 4-5 man-hours.

Chris Buck/Mother Jones
Derek Peterson and Dhar Mann were business partners, then enemies, and now a truce has been struck

​Multiple lawsuits between estranged medical marijuana business partners, Dhar Mann and Derek Peterson, have reportedly ended as the two entrepreneurs broke out the peace pipe and agreed on an undisclosed settlement this week.

Mann founded weGrow, the nation’s first medical marijuana superstore and partnered up with Peterson shortly after starting the company in 2010. Within a year, the partnership ended on a bitter note and a variety of increasingly hostile claims and counterclaims were filed by both parties against each other.
After nearly a year of unpleasantness, both Mann and Peterson have come to an agreement to settle all claims and put aside their differences.
“Medical cannabis is under fire around the country, and it’s more important than ever to have a consolidated front,” Mann said. “There are bigger issues facing medical cannabis that personal and business differences should not exacerbate.”

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, with help from the Texas Attorney General, persuaded a judge to fine a local smoke shop and novelty chain $1.2 million for selling kush, Ryan’s office announced Thursday.

Katz Boutique and Smoke Shop agreed to pay the fines to settle several lawsuits filed by the state and Harris County against the company’s nine area stores. The penalty is the largest ever for sellers of kush, which is sometimes called synthetic marijuana, though the drugs share few similarities.

“Oink, oink, oink.”


In a prelude to city council chaos in Santa Ana over a ‘Fuck the Police’ hat last week, Mayor Miguel Pulido praised policemen amid jeers during a previous meeting. Santa Ana Police officer John G. Rodriguez received a service award as one of the honorees on September 2 for being on the force 25 years–almost as long as the reign of the Pulidiato itself!
“He’s received two Santa Ana police department service medals of valor for actions during encounters with armed suspects,” the Don Papi said, mentioning the cop’s many credentials. Left out, of course, is the fact that lawsuits filed this year allege officer Rodriguez used excessive and lethal force in shooting Travis Mock, an unarmed man, in the back last year in an incident that also left another man, Jason Hallstrom, dead.

More photos below.

The Hershey Co. recently sued a Colorado firm, TinctureBelle, for copyright infringement — and it’s filed a similar suit against a Washington business, Seattle Conscious Care Cooperative.
Should we expect more complaints like these? Well, most pot edibles we’ve seen for sale in Colorado are in no danger of inspiring one — but judging by images we found online, there are plenty of product designs out there capable of making lawyers salivate. Look above and below to see twenty pics of items that have been or could be targeted by suits.

Toke of the Town.


Medical marijuana activist John Tracey acted on two eminently reasonable beliefs late last July. The result? He got busted.
Belief 1: That a Black Sabbath concert would provide a mother lode of support for a petition to put a referendum on medical marijuana on this fall’s ballot.
Belief 2: That the First Amendment is in effect at Cruzan Amphitheatre, since it’s owned by the South Florida Fair and is, by state law, public property.
He was right about one of those things.

Despite having approval from Health Canada, Tweed Marijuana says a shipment of herb grown by private B.C. growers previously licensed to grow cannabis was seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police over the weekend.
All of this after Tweed invited the mounties to examine the shipment. Only in Canada are people nice enough to invite the police over to check out their quasi-legal operations.

1 2 3 4