You have questions. We have answers. Register HERE today for this Thursday’s Q&A! Harris Bricken’s California attorneys regularly advise cannabis and hemp businesses and entrepreneurs on nearly all aspects of California’s licensed and highly regulated cannabis, hemp, and CBD industries. We understand how complicated these industries can be and to that end, our California cannabis […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called “Cannabis Business Litigation: What’s the Point of a Demand Letter?” If you didn’t read that post, the gist is that demand letters can sometimes spur early settlement talks or the correction of improper conduct and avoid costly litigation or arbitration. Today, I want to talk about […]

On May 14, 2020, the three California cannabis agencies, the Bureau of Cannabis Control, Department of Food and Agriculture CalCannabis Division, and Department of Public Health’s Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch announced that licensed cannabis businesses with “licenses expiring between now through June 30, 2020 may request 60-day deferrals of their license fee payments.” The announcement […]

In this post, I want to explore something very significant that a lot of people gloss over when reviewing contracts: non-compete clauses. Non-compete clauses are exactly what they sound like: they prohibit one party from competing with another. A common example of a non-compete is in an executive employment agreement, where an executive of a […]

You have questions. We have answers. Register HERE today for our upcoming Q&A! Harris Bricken’s California attorneys regularly advise cannabis and hemp businesses and entrepreneurs on nearly all aspects of California’s licensed and highly regulated cannabis, hemp, and CBD industries. We understand how complicated these industries can be and to that end, our California cannabis […]

It’s been a while since we’ve written about the unfolding cannabis licensing situation in the City of Los Angeles, and a lot has happened. For some background on LA’s complicated licensing process, it has proceeded to date in multiple “phases” administered by the Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation (“DCR”): The first phase was limited to […]

Even though they’re currently deemed “essential“, California cannabis businesses were already struggling financially before the onset of COVID-19. Increasing competition from unregulated, un-taxed, illegal actors combined with high local and state taxes combined with costly and competitive local barriers to entry were all leading to delayed opening timelines, shorted budgets, terrible margins, and increasing failures […]

Over the last few months, cannabis and CBD companies have been subject to some pretty massively publicized cases. We’ve seen partnership disputes, consumer class actions, shareholder suits, agency enforcement actions, intellectual property cases, and more. One thing virtually nobody is talking about—or prepared for—are the inevitable wave of CCPA suits. Before I explain what CCPA […]

In my ten years of advising and guiding cannabis companies from a corporate, transactional, and M&A perspective, and especially since 2012 (when Washington and Colorado legalized), every cannabis market in which I’ve worked has experienced a period of extensive business failures, consolidations, and market stress. And it’s that time now for California cannabis (and that […]

We were pushing hard for this. On March 21, the California Bureau of Cannabis Control sent the following email notifying cannabis licensees that they may continue operating despite the state’s lockdown order: On Thursday, March 19, 2020 Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay at home order to protect the health and well-being of all Californians […]