The Private Personal Injury Bar is about to do to Cannabis Cultivators what the DEA never could…INFLICT CRIPPLING MONETARY DAMAGES on the industry.
Here’s how it happens.
Take an incident like when Oregon’s Liquor Control Commission recalled Blue Magoo marijuana strain after 2017 samples were found to contain state-limit-exceeding pesticide residue levels.
Now imagine personal injury lawyers hijacking social media, and leveraging like-minded legislators, regulators and media sources, as they toss a $10,000-claim grenade at Blue Magoo’s growers and processors and any dispensary selling the strain.
Each year defective, faulty or misused products cause serious injuries, property damage and business interruption. Defending litigation or settling claims can materially drain a company’s resources requiring additional regulatory requirement compliance, developing/disseminating product warnings, instituting a product recall, deploying employee time to investigate/mitigate claims, investigating/testing products and assessing risk, and hiring expert consultants and attorneys.
Lawsuits range from a single plaintiff seeking damages for personal injuries or property damage to class actions in which a defect is common to an entire group of claimants.
Due to marijuana’s 100 percent federal illegality, even more is at risk. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 prohibits marijuana’s manufacture, distribution, dispensation and possession and lists it next to heroin as a Schedule I controlled substance having “a high potential for abuse,” 21 U.S.C. Sections 801, Et. Seq (1970) (Controlled Substance Act). Thus, claims may be brought against anyone in the marijuana industry’s supply chain touching the item prior to sale to the consumer; i.e., anyone planting, cultivating, harvesting, processing/extracting, testing, packaging, disposing, transporting and dispensing marijuana (hereafter, collectively referred to as marijuana-related businesses).Read more here