The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the case of a trucker who sued a cannabis company after he was fired over a positive THC test that he says was caused by consuming a hemp-derived CBD product.
Douglas Horn filed a lawsuit against the business, Medical Marijuana Inc., in 2015 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. He alleged that the company falsely advertised the product as having “0% THC,” which is why he decided to try it for pain management.
A federal circuit court initially sided with Horn and allowed the RICO suit to proceed, but the business appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. Justices agreed to take up the case in April.
The substance of the legal dispute doesn’t center on cannabis policy but instead on RICO itself. The high court will consider specifically whether “economic harms resulting from personal injuries are injuries to ‘business or property by reason of’ the defendant’s acts for purposes of civil RICO,” according to a description on the court’s calendar.
While RICO cases are generally associated with large-scale prosecutions of criminal organizations, the statute can be applied in civil matters as well. In this instance, Horn claims to have been “injured in his business or property” because his employment was terminated due to the positive THC test. He alleges that Medical Marijuana Inc. committed mail and wire fraud.
Horn’s “termination cost him current and future wages and his insurance and pension benefits–all of which were tied to his employment,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. And that injury falls under the plain meaning of the word “business” in the RICO statute.
Horn’s latest Supreme Court brief echoes that message. “This Court should adhere to civil RICO’s plain text and hold that the phrase ‘injured in his business or property’ means exactly what it says,” attorneys wrote. “The alternative, as petitioners’ panoply of flawed and conflicting rules makes clear, is at odds with the statute’s words and Congress’s express admonition to liberally construe them.”
Medical Marijuana Inc., however, contends that “RICO’s text is clear”—but in the other direction.
“Plaintiffs cannot sue for personal injuries. Plaintiffs cannot bypass that bar by brandishing receipts for the economic costs of personal injuries. Case closed,” the company’s most recent brief says.
A number of notable groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable and others.
The Chamber of Commerce says the Second Circuit’s earlier ruling in the case was wrongly reasoned, warning that an overly expansive reading of RICO damages could “explode” the statute.
“The Second Circuit was dead wrong to characterize this case as arising from a ‘defect…inherent in the statute as written’ that only Congress can fix,” it said. “Congress did its job, and allowed plaintiffs to recover only for injuries to ‘business or property’—not for personal injuries and their indirect economic consequences. The necessary limits are textual and should be enforced in accord with civil RICO’s established focus on economic injury.”
The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, for its part, told justices in its amicus brief that the hemp industry would be “adversely affected” if the court’s ruling ultimately expands businesses’ liability in tort cases.
“Here, the RICO targets are industry participants,” the trade group said, arguing that the hemp industry is “multi-layered and creates a myriad of societal benefits.”
“The threat of expansive liability aimed at those in the industry directly jeopardizes the Roundtable and its mission,” its filing says.
In another amicus filing, the American Association for Justice sides with Horn, arguing that Medical Marijuana Inc.’s claims about personal injury cases “have no basis in the real world and cannot justify limiting the reach of civil RICO.”
Given the court’s focus on RICO and unpacking the limits of that federal law, even groups far from the hemp industry have weighed in. The Human Trafficking Legal Center, for example, opposes Medical Marijuana Inc.’s reading of the statute because it says such a narrow view “could bar trafficking survivors from pursuing RICO claims for economic injuries that flow from personal injuries.”
“If petitioners’ rule reigns, trafficking survivors who have endured a similar plight…might not receive due compensation for their economic injuries,” the advocacy group said in its brief. “Their captors and others like them could perpetrate trafficking and racketeering activities without having to face the deterrent of trebled damages.”
In a separate case that was settled in January, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) rehired and is providing back pay to a special agent who was fired after testing positive for THC that he attributed to CBD he was taking as an opioid alternative for chronic pain, with the agency reaching an agreement in a lawsuit challenging the termination.
Other cases currently in federal courts have been plumbing the boundaries of Second Amendment rights as they relate to marijuana users. Earlier this month, for example, lawyers in an appeals court case faced off over when the government may lawfully disarm someone for using marijuana. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that merely a person’s recent use of the drug is sufficient to establish that they’re in violation of the law and should not legally be able to possess a gun.
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, however, pushed back on the government’s position, noting at oral argument on Tuesday that a recently published opinion within the same judicial circuit held that while “some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon” may be constitutional, “disarming a sober person based on past substance usage” is not.
That case is U.S. v. Daniels, which earlier this year was set to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court but was among a number of firearms-related cases remanded back to lower courts following a separate ruling about firearms and domestic violence.
Courts across the country have been considering the constitutionality of the government’s ban on gun and ammunition ownership by people who use marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law. And generally jurists have been skeptical of the sweeping Second Amendment restriction.
Photo elements courtesy of rawpixel and Philip Steffan.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the case of a trucker who sued a cannabis company after he was fired over a positive THC test that he says was caused by consuming a hemp-derived CBD product. Douglas Horn filed a lawsuit against the business, Medical Marijuana Inc., in Read More