L.A. Pot Store Closures Can Continue, Court Says
An attempt to squash the current crackdown on post-moratorium pot storefronts in L.A. via the courts has failed, but many more lawsuits and court hearings lie ahead.
An attempt to get a temporary injunction against the city enforcing its June 7 deadline to shut down hundreds of pot storefronts that opened after the city declared a (now overturned by the courts) moratorium on them in November 2007 has failed. But the L.A. Weekly reports on many more legal challenges to come for the city:
Jane Usher, senior adviser to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and the former head of the L.A. planning commission, told the Weekly that two additional pot-shop lawsuits against the city, on top of four existing ones, were rumored to be in the works.Still, Usher expressed confidence that the city would remain in a winning position in court. "There is at the moment to no judicial order restraining the city's enforcement come June 7," she said.
It matters very much in American justice the luck of what judge ends up hearing your case:
On Wednesday a judge indicated he might just give the plaintiffs their injunction. But when he said he was unable to preside over a subsequent hearing for a permanent injunction, the suit was transferred to Judge David P. Yaffee, who shut the door on the foursome of dispensaries.Attorneys for the shops had argued that the city's new law denied them due legal process -- there's virtually no pathway for legality under the new ordinance -- and equal protection under the law (because they weren't part of a 2007 group of shops grandfathered in by the city for possible legality).
The L.A. Times report has more specifics on other lawsuits the city faces challenging its crackdown:
The city also faces nine lawsuits filed this week by attorney Stewart Richlin, who intends to seek court orders to halt enforcement of the ordinance."I think that an intelligent judge looking at the facts objectively will agree that the city is applying a different standard to this process because of reefer madness," he said. Eric Shevin, another attorney, plans to file a lawsuit soon on behalf of medical marijuana patients and also pursue an order that would bar the city from enforcing the ordinance.
I wrote a cover story for the May issue of Reason magazine detailing the tangled history of Los Angeles's attempts to regulate medical marijuana storefronts.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Caveman92223. It was used under user Creative Commons license.
