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In a filing late last week, attorneys for Alabama Always – one of several medical cannabis companies that has filed suit against the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission over its beleaguered licensing process – is asking a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge to put an end to the onslaught of arguments over technical legal matters and finally rule on whether the Commission violated Alabama law with its odd licensing process.
A status hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning in the case, and it is expected that attorneys will push Judge James Anderson to move forward with the legal process – which has been stuck in neutral as the AMCC’s attorneys filed numerous, mostly technical motions seeking relief from the state appeals court.
Essentially, according to the filing, Alabama Always’ attorneys believe that certain undisputed facts in the case – mainly that the AMCC doesn’t contest the fact that its licensing process was set up in a manner that doesn’t adhere to requirements of the Alabama Administrative Procedures Act – give the court enough cause to start the process of determining how those errors can be corrected.
“After more than fourteen months of litigation, it is high time one of the parties suggested a path forward, particularly since the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission seems to have no interest in doing so,” the filing reads. “The Commission has known for over a year that its proceedings thus far violate the contested case provisions of the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act, and yet it has done nothing to fix them.”
There is very little arguing that the AMCC’s licensing process fails to meet the “contested case” requirements of the AAPA. Under those guidelines, the Commission, because it was awarding a limited number of licenses to companies that seemingly qualified to obtain those licenses, should have established a public hearing process in which applicants presented evidence and witnesses explaining why they were the most qualified to receive the licenses, and the other applicants would have been able to challenge that evidence.
Instead, the Commission created a strange, opaque process, which included secret scoring (that was later tossed out because it was arbitrary and flawed), a secret vote by commissioners, a scoring system that allowed a minority of commissioners to deny an applicant a license and an awards process in which the Commission never explained publicly why some applicants received a license or why other applicants didn’t.
Anderson has repeatedly stated that he was most troubled by the AMCC’s refusal to establish a viable hearing process by which denied applicants could challenge the Commission’s decisions and raise basic questions about why licenses were awarded.
The Alabama Always filing asks him to act on those concerns and set a briefing schedule to determine if the AMCC has violated the law, and then for either the court or a court-appointed special master to set a course to rectify the problem.
Otherwise, attorney Will Somerville said in a statement sent to media, there is no end in sight for the many lawsuits. Already, the statement says, the AMCC has spent more than a million dollars on attorneys’ fees, with more than a half-million coming in 2024 alone.
The Alabama Legislature approved medical marijuana more than three years ago now, but there has still been no product delivered to patients. And there remains no licensed integrated facility to do so.
