Implementing Alabama’s medical cannabis law from 2021 could be allowed to continue with a favorable ruling by a Montgomery County Circuit Judge in April.
The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) awarded 20 licenses to various companies in every category besides integrated facilities at their Dec. 1, 2023 meeting. Five companies were awarded integrated facilities licenses on December 12: Trulieve AL, Sustainable Alabama, Wagon Trail Med-Serv, Flowerwood Medical Cannabis and Specialty Medical Products of Alabama.
The December meetings were the third time AMCC awarded licenses in 2023. The previous two rounds were revoked after unsuccessful applicants filed lawsuits against the AMCC over Alabama Open Meetings Act compliance and concerns about how companies were scored and ranked in the application process.
AMCC settled that litigation in November. However, cannabis companies that weren’t awarded licenses in the third round sued the AMCC again in December. Montgomery County Circuit Judge James Anderson currently has a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the commission.
On Monday, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals stayed all proceedings on litigation surrounding the medical cannabis law until Anderson decides on a pending motion to dismiss in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
According to Anderson, a hearing on the motion to dismiss is tentatively scheduled for around April 15.
“Feeling their hands slip from the litigation rope they once purported to use to tie the Commission, the Plaintiffs have attempted to escape the consequences of failing to properly file their lawsuits against the Commission beginning in the spring of 2023," William Webster, an attorney with AMCC, said in a motion to dismiss filed on Monday. "Recognizing their imminent dismissal, they have begun to file amended Complaints in improperly commenced actions lacking subject matter jurisdiction or file entirely new actions, both too early for the exhaustion doctrine, too late for the statute of limitations, and while they have other suits that remain pending in this Court."
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