Former judge appointed mediator in medical marijuana dispute

Former Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eugene Reese will now be at the center of Alabama’s long-running feud over Alabama medical cannabis licenses. 

Reese, who retired from the bench in 2018, was appointed Monday by Judge James Anderson as mediator in the legal dispute between the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission and several plaintiff companies who were denied licenses after what they have claimed was a process that violated Alabama law. 

Anderson said in his order that he was “of the opinion that the use of alternative dispute resolution is appropriate in this case and could result in the speedy and just resolution” of the case. 

The appointment of Reese is likely viewed as a setback for the AMCC, which had sought a dismissal of the cases and pushed Anderson to rule that the plaintiff companies were required under Alabama law to exhaust all administrative remedies – essentially, that the companies had to file grievances through the AMCC and go through its hearing process first – before a court could consider their lawsuits. 

Anderson has not yet ruled on that motion to dismiss, but it is apparent that he would like the two sides to come to an agreement on a pathway forward. 

That would seem unlikely, since there appears to be but one pathway and the AMCC has consistently rejected it to this point. That path would essentially be to start the licensing process anew and install a process that complies with the Alabama Administrative Procedures Act (AAPA). 

There is little dispute at this point that the process undertaken by the AMCC, which to this point has attempted on three different occasions to award integrated growers licenses, failed to adhere to the standards of the AAPA. The process required by the AAPA when limited numbers of licenses are awarded to multiple qualified applicants is to hold essentially contested hearings, at which all parties can contest or defend the awarding of licenses, present evidence and witnesses and cross-examine opposing experts. 

The AMCC’s process contained none of that, and it instead first relied on a confusing scoring/grading system conducted by the University of South Alabama. The AMCC eventually admitted, after lawsuits were filed, that the scoring was “flawed.” It sought to start over, but inexplicably utilized the “flawed” grades as part of a second attempt. That attempt too was eventually abandoned. 

A third attempt employed a new scoring system, in which commissioners ranked the applicant companies. That process also failed to adhere to AAPA standards and the plaintiffs alleged it unfairly allowed a minority of commissioners to essentially block a company from receiving a license. 

Throughout the process, though, the AMCC has repeatedly refused to draw up a licensing process that followed the AAPA guidelines. Why that is remains unclear.