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Lawyer Sues Warren ..medical Marijuana Harassment


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Lawyer sues Mich. town over alleged medical marijuana harassment

 

 

Bill Laitner, Detroit Free Press 12:05 a.m. EDT September 29, 2015

 

DETROIT — A Warren lawyer filed a lawsuit Monday against the city that demands up to $5 million in damages on behalf of 23 state-approved medical-marijuana users who say they’ve been harassed and ticketed by Warren police.

 

The lawsuit, filed in Macomb Circuit Court by attorney Michael Greiner, also claims that Warren zoning officials, Police Commissioner Jere Green and Mayor Jim Fouts cooperated in a policy to shut down a medical-marijuana transfer center — the Michigan Safe Transfer Center at 29601 Hoover, in an area zoned for a medical office — through a police raid and confiscation of the owners’ property, without a search warrant.

 

The suit also claims that police on Sept. 17 and Sept. 18 stopped each car leaving the transfer center and questioned drivers in what constituted an illegal roadblock and illegal searches and then raided the center on Sept. 18. Greiner said that the transfer center, of which he is a 50% partner, allows caregivers to provide medical cannabis to people who are officially registered with the state as medical-marijuana users.

 

 

 

 

"We're not a walk-in clinic — that's why you can't call us a dispensary," said Greiner's business partner, Bryan Mazurkiewicz.

 

The Warren business has been scrupulous about observing a state requirement that registered medical-marijuana caregivers provide the drug only to the five patients whose names they have listed with the state's Department of Licensing and Regulation. Michigan's medical-marijuana act says that a state-approved caregiver can dispense only to five users, and that they must have their names registered with the state as being linked to that caregiver. In contrast, a medical-marijuana dispensary, such as those shops for which the Detroit City Council is considering passing a licensing ordinance, generally sell to anyone possessing a state medical-marijuana card, although a Detroit ordinance likely would require compliance with state law in the way that the Warren center says that it operates.

 

The Michigan Safe Transfer Center is located at the rear of Greiner's law office.

 

Although Warren has no special ordinance on the books governing medical marijuana in the city, leaders and police have conducted “an unwritten policy opposing the lawful cultivation and transfer of medical marijuana, despite state law to the contrary,” the lawsuit claims. Warren officials did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

 

The complaint quotes Warren’s chief zoning inspector as having said to one defendant, “We don’t want those kinds of people here.”

 

State law is vague as to whether dispensaries or transfer centers are legal. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette declared in 2013 that dispensaries were not legal in Michigan, yet hundreds of them continue to operate, generally in counties where prosecutors have been tolerant of them, such as Washtenaw County, or where there apparently are higher law-enforcement priorities, such as Wayne County.

 

Detroit alone is thought to encompass more than 100 dispensaries, and the Detroit City Council is engaged this month in debating how to regulate and tax the new form of retail business. Other forms of medical-marijuana facilities, including some claiming non-profit status, have opened after Schuette's statement, many operating without advertising or signage, according to associations of patients.

 

 

 

In Macomb County, authorities raided and padlocked a dispensary recently in Shelby Township, alleging that the operators were violating Michigan’s medical marijuana act by possessing far more marijuana than the act allows and selling to people who lacked state registry cards.

 

In Warren, the medical-marijuana users who are plaintiffs to Monday's legal case against the city “have suffered embarrassment, humiliation, stress, fear, nightmares, loss of income and physical pain as a result of their inability to get needed medicine,” the lawsuit states.

 

Bryan Mazurkiewicz said he and Greiner opened Michigan Safe Transfer Center about eight months ago. It includes a patient consultation area and four rooms where they grew marijuana, "absolutely according to state law," Mazurkiewicz said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USA TODAY

 

Michigan rejects use of medical marijuana for autism

 

 

"Everything's locked, the paperwork is all there — stating whose plants they are — and no one has more marijuana than they're allowed to have," he said.

 

"At one time, we had about 100 caregivers operating out of here, but now we're down to 14 after all the trouble we've had with the city," Mazurkiewicz said.

 

"We've been trying to work with the city," said Greiner, whose law office has a sign that says only "Bankruptcy" in bright-red letters.

 

"We've been dealing with the building department, the city law department, the zoning department, the mayor. I actually talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago," Greiner said, referring to Fouts.

 

He said Fouts was "just unreceptive to what I was saying." Fouts and other city officials did not return calls Monday from the Free Press.

 

In 2008, more than 65% of the voters in Warren supported the ballot proposal establishing Michigan’s medical-marijuana act.

Edited by grassmatch
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  • 1 month later...

Wow ! thanks for the update after reading it i see now that just because someone does sues its a long way from winning the old saying goes you can't sue city Hall or you can but if its about Marihuana the changes are very low 

 

I also see that a group of people sued DTE and didn't win and now DTE is counter suing them for money to pay their own Lawyers

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