Business
Wedding Guest Files Lawsuit Over Pot-Infused Reception Food
A wedding guest who was unwittingly served food infused with marijuana has filed a lawsuit against the event caterer.
A woman who attended a Florida wedding earlier this year has filed a lawsuit against the caterer for the event, alleging that the business served food infused with cannabis at the reception. Virginia Ann Taylor-Svoboda, the plaintiff in the legal action, says that she “became immediately ill” after unknowingly eating food that was laced with “poisonous” amounts of marijuana, according to a report from the Miami Herald.
The wedding was held on February 19 in the city of Longwood, Florida, about 15 miles north of Orlando. After several guests reported that they felt high or stoned at the reception following the ceremony, emergency medical personnel and sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene to render aid, eventually taking several guests to a local hospital for treatment.
A police report filed after the wedding reception revealed that food served at the event was sent to a lab for testing. The reports of the lab analyses showed that lasagna and bread served at the celebration tested positive for THC, the cannabinoid largely responsible for the high commonly associated with consuming marijuana.
Taylor-Svoboda filed suit in Seminole County against Joycelyn Bryant and her company, Joycelyn’s Southern Kitchen, asserting that she had no idea that the food served at the wedding reception contained cannabis. A complaint filed in the suit alleges that Taylor-Svoboda suffered from “marijuana poisoning” after consuming food served by Bryant’s company. The lawsuit, which requests a jury trial for the case, accuses Bryant of negligence and seeks more than $30,000 in damages from the defendant and her business.
“(Bryant) knew, or should have known, that allowing the food served by (Joycelyn’s Southern Kitchen) to be laced with marijuana was reasonably likely to cause injuries and damages to wedding guests,” the lawsuit maintains.
Bride And Caterer Arrested In February
In April, Bryant and the bride, Danya Shea Svoboda, were arrested and charged with violating the Florida Anti-Tampering Act, delivery of marijuana and culpable negligence, according to the report from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. Affidavits filed in the case allege that Svoboda “agreed to and allowed Joycelyn Montrinice Bryant to lace the food she served … with cannabis unbeknownst to the attendees, many of whom became very ill and required medical attention,” according to a report from CNN.
When deputies from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the reception, several wedding guests were being treated by county fire rescue personnel for “symptoms consistent with that of someone who has used illegal drugs,” according to police records.
When a deputy asked the bride and her new husband, Andrew Svoboda, whether they had requested or consented to the food being infused with cannabis, Andrew “stared at (the deputy) with a blank expression for a few moments before stuttering through a ‘no,’” the affidavits state.
Lab tests showed three wedding guests had urine tests that were positive for cannabis, according to court records filed in the criminal case. Some wedding guests reported that they felt “stoned” and “ill and high,” the affidavits report, while another guest said that he felt “weird, tingly, fidgety, and had an extremely dry mouth” after eating food served at the wedding reception. When a woman asked the caterer if the food contained marijuana, Bryant “giggled and shook her head yes,” the report states.
According to the affidavits, one woman told an investigator that while she was at the hospital, she felt paranoid and “believed her husband … wasn’t telling her the truth about other family members,” adding that she had thought her son-in-law had died and no one was telling her. She said she became loud and unruly in the hospital emergency room and had to be sedated to calm her down.
Defendants Face Food-Tampering Charges
The Tampa-based Sammis Law Firm reported that Florida’s Anti-Tampering Act “covers tampering with food as well as tampering with certain types of drugs, devices, or cosmetics.” Attorneys noted that the statute is not often used, in part because “the statutory language is poorly written and fails to track the federal food anti-tampering law.” The firm also notes that the “terms used in Florida’s Anti-Tampering Statute are extremely vague, leading to constitutional challenges by criminal defense attorneys.”
“Local law enforcement officers will investigate any such allegation and take swift action. These crimes can be charged as a third-degree, second-degree, or first-degree felony depending on how the tampering occurred and the harm caused,” the firm explains. “Many of these crimes are committed by juveniles because of the often impulsive nature of the offense.”
The criminal case against Bryant is ongoing. She is due for her next appearance in court on January 11.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/wedding-guest-files-lawsuit-over-pot-infused-reception-food/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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