Three Montana hashish licensees and the state final week agreed to a joint settlement to permit a 60-day preliminary injunction towards a state regulation that elevated licensing charges for companies that function a number of dispensaries, KTVH studies. The settlement within the lawsuit filed by hashish enterprise homeowners within the state offers the plaintiffs and the state time to come back to a negotiated settlement.
Below the regulation, which handed on the finish of the 2023 legislative session, dispensary homeowners would pay $5,000 for the primary dispensary, $10,000 for the second, and one other $5,000 added to the charge for every extra. Below the earlier state regulation, companies paid a flat $5,000 charge for every extra dispensary.
Granite Peak Holdings, one of many plaintiffs within the lawsuit, stated that underneath the brand new regime, it must pay $525,000 in charges for its 14 lively dispensaries, in comparison with $70,000 underneath the earlier regulation.
“If the State will not be enjoined from implementing its newly enacted charge construction, Plaintiffs should shut down a lot of their dispensary areas,” the lawsuit contends, “leading to worker job losses, hurt to the general public who make the most of the Plaintiffs’ dispensary areas, lack of worth of their owned and leased areas, and legal responsibility arising from possible breaches of their lease obligations.”
Two different licensees – TSB, which operates 15 High Shelf Botanicals dispensaries, and MariMint, which operates 5 dispensaries – expressed the identical issues within the lawsuit and additional argued the brand new charge construction could be an unjustified “taking” of their property, the report says.
The Montana Division of Justice argues that the state does have professional regulatory prices when licensees resolve to open extra dispensaries and that the plaintiffs couldn’t set up that there’s a taking of property just because they don’t have the chance for extra areas.
“The burden on Plaintiffs is minimal,” the state stated within the submitting. “There exists one motive and one motive solely that Plaintiffs search to open totally different marijuana trade areas underneath the identical license – they wish to generate income.”
A listening to set for this week was canceled as a result of settlement.
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