Cannabis Musings - March 28, 2025
A plethora of litigation goodness.
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It’s been a busy fortnight for cannabis industry litigation while these Cannabis Musings have been on vacation. It’s always appreciated when we can come back and find a few gems in the rough that almost make you forget the overall malaise.
We’ve talked before about the cannabis illegality defense – basically, ‘you can’t enforce that against me because cannabis is illegal’ argument, like when Kramer couldn’t be fired from a job that he didn’t have. It’s objectively funny for a cannabis operator, whose entire business violates federal law, to try to get out of a contract for the same reason.
So, imagine my delight when I learned that Curaleaf, one of the largest MSOs in the US, is arguing in a federal lawsuit that a jury’s $32 million verdict against it in a contract dispute should be tossed because, well, you know:
“Contracts to manufacture and distribute marijuana are unenforceable, period.”…
“It is irrelevant that Michigan permits the manufacture and sale of marijuana, as the parties plainly knew the transaction was federally illegal. Thus, [the plaintiff] was not justified in expecting a federal court to enforce the contract. Nor could the parties have justifiably expected even a Michigan court to enforce the contract.”…
“In short, there is no public interest in enforcing this agreement, and every interest against it.”
To be fair, it’s the right argument to make in federal court – should a federal court endorse illegal activities? Lawyers need to be zealous advocates for their clients, and the industry wallows in the morass of federal illegality, so it may as well try to take advantage of that fact when it can. And yet, the risk of not being able to enforce contracts in court (at least, federal court) has been a concern for the industry for years, and clearly remains a live issue.
The irony, though. Geshmak.
On a somewhat related note, the Supreme Court of California recently depublished (pulled) a state appellate court opinion from earlier this year that refused to enforce a local, city-imposed easement to transport cannabis because, yep, cannabis is illegal. That opinion understandably gave cannabis lawyers a fair amount of tsuris, so the state’s high court smacking down the lower court’s fairly perfunctory legal analysis assures us that licensed cannabis in California is still legal (well, at least partially).
And yet, all of this pales in comparison to the most Cannabis Musings-ish lawsuit to date. As reported by the Cleveland Jewish News, three men were recently indicted in federal court for selling unlicensed hash oil in Ohio under the names “Dank Vapes” and “Dankwoods”, laundering the proceeds through Tibor’s Kosher Meats, a Kosher butcher in the Cleveland suburbs. It kind of puts my THC/CBD-infused knish truck to shame. I’d like to think that they used Tibor’s as a front (allegedly) solely to get mentioned in Cannabis Musings.
Be seeing you!
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© 2025 Marc Hauser. None of the foregoing is legal, investment, or any other sort of advice, and it may not be relied upon in any manner, shape, or form. The foregoing represents my own views and not those of Jardín.