Harris Sliwoski’s Vince Sliwoski (Portland) will present in-person next Friday, April 14 at the 36th annual Northwest Bankruptcy Institute. Vince will join Dominique Scalia of DBS Law (Seattle) as they cover “The Business of Cannabis and Bankruptcy.” This event is co-sponsored by sections of the Oregon State Bar and Washington State Bar. Details on the
As those in the cannabis industry are fully aware, the option of bankruptcy has not been available to cannabis or many cannabis-adjacent businesses to date. The courts have consistently indicated debtors who work in the cannabis industry or derive meaningful income from cannabis activity (directly or indirectly) cannot use bankruptcy, a federal mechanism, so long
Florida voters may have the opportunity to legalize adult-use cannabis during the next general elections. First, though, the Florida Supreme Court must okay the language on the ballot initiative, in the face of likely opposition from the other branches of the state government. As Floridians watch their elected officials argue against letting them vote on
ChatGPT is all the rage. The GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”. Translation: this is a next level, nearly omnipotent chatbot that’s incredibly articulate and conversant. Per Wikipedia: “while the core function of a chatbot is to mimic a human conversationalist, ChatGPT is versatile, including the ability to write and debug computer programs; to compose
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 struggles of failing marijuana businesses to wind down and pay creditors in an orderly fashion serve no one. Among the problems marijuana businesses face such as lack of access to banking and onerous taxation stemming from IRC 280E is the lack of access to bankruptcy proceedings. This post discusses a Michigan-based medical marijuana company
While patent protection has been generally available for some time now, we’ve covered why patent protection has been largely limited for the cannabis industry (see this post). However, that isn’t going to stop patent infringement actions from reaching cannabis businesses, as can be seen from a recent case filed by a greenhouse builder. The complaint
Investors in marijuana businesses face many risks. To name just a few: the subject of their investment is illegal under federal law; the businesses in which they are investing face heavy tax burdens because of IRC 280e; and the lack of access to banking services means businesses operate nearly exclusively cash, which makes tracking sales,
Like all commercial litigation, cannabis business litigation is expensive and in most circumstances a party cannot recover its attorneys’ fees. The exception is where recovery is authorized by a contract or a statute. This post discusses how a party in commercial litigation—whether involving cannabis or not—can use an Offer of Judgment to leverage a more
Most people who are (luckily) not familiar with litigation believe alternative dispute resolution (or “ADR”) clauses in their contracts are essentially boilerplate language that’s recycled again and again in every contract. However, well-drafted ADR clauses can not only give you a huge advantage if an issue comes up, they may also cause your counterparty to
