Two families — including one mom who alleges Child Protective Services took her suckling baby from her breast — are suing the state, alleging discrimination because they are medical marijuana users and poor.
In the lawsuit, attorney Michael KOMORN alleges the faith-based foster care and adoption agencies used by the State of Michigan were “grossly negligent” in opposing and delaying reunification of his clients’ children on the grounds of “poverty and illness” and in violation of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act.
The suit also alleges Michigan laws allowing faith-based agencies “to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs are unconstitutional.”
“The mental image of CPS entering a hospital room accompanied by armed men and taking a newborn from a nursing mother’s breast and from the grandmother, shattering three generations of lives because CPS and Holy Cross (Children Services) found this family to be unfit because they were poor, diseased, medical marijuana card holders is excruciating,” Komorn said in the lawsuit filed Dec. 15 in the Court of Claims. “They treated this family the way the poor and leprous were treated until Jesus taught otherwise.”
Plaintiffs in the case are two families — Jennifer BARTLETT, her three children and parents, and Spring Lake residents Max LORINCZ and his wife, Erica CHITTENDON, and their son.
In addition to Clinton-based Holy Cross, defendants are the State of Michigan, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick LYON, Executive Director Herman McCALL of Children Services Agency, Holy Cross worker Andrea HAGEN, Bethany Christian Services and its social worker, Kerry JIPPING, and CPS social worker Cody MAYHEM.
Kassie KRETZSCHMAR, a spokeswoman with Holy Cross, was not able to comment on Thursday because the agency had not seen the lawsuit.
A spokeswoman with Bethany Christian Services was working to get a comment from officials late Thursday.
According to the lawsuit, Bartlett’s children were removed from the family after a houseguest was killed in January 2016 when his gun accidentally discharged while her children were present.
Bartlett took her children to her parents’ home for safety while police investigated the case as a murder prior to blaming her boyfriend, who had spent time in jail.
Mayhew went to the children’s grandparents’ home and told Bartlett that the children were going to be removed because Bartlett “was not showing proper emotions and was making poor life choices,” the lawsuit alleges. Mayhew then drug-tested Bartlett, who tested negative, and she questioned the grandparents,’ who she said “were medical marijuana cardholders.”
Bartlett’s children were removed after a hearing in January 2016 and placed with Holy Cross.
Hagen, who was the Bartlett family’s caseworker, told the court the children shouldn’t be placed with her parents’ because her father had a 27-year-old conviction for use of half of a marijuana joint.
Drug officers later interviewed Bartlett to try to tie her and her boyfriend to drug trafficking in Detroit, which she denied. She was later charged with maintaining a drug house. She was eventually released on bond, but rearrested and charged with possession of drugs found in her dead guest’s pockets as well as conducting a criminal enterprise.
The lawsuit alleges that Hagen maintained Bartlett’s parents would not be good placement for her children because they “had a bad attitude” and were “uncooperative.” She also publicly revealed medical information about the grandmother in violation of federal privacy rules, the suit alleges.
Bartlett, who was pregnant, was released from jail in November 2016. A few hours after giving birth, a CPS worker saw her breastfeeding the baby and returned later with a court order and the police.
CPS “took (the) baby . . . from her mother’s breast and took her away, placing her with Holy Cross,” Komorn alleged.
After more than a year in foster care, Bartlett’s children were returned to her and the case closed in June 2017.
Komorn noted in the lawsuit that Hagen was “recently disciplined” by the Department of Health and Human Services for “misrepresenting health issues” of Bartlett’s parents “to justify placing the children with Holy Cross,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges Lorencz and Chittendon were not told that they could opt-out of a faith-based agency. When they learned they could, they sought a court order dismissing Bethany.
The lawsuit further alleges that Jipping testified at a hearing that “marijuana, even legally used for medical conditions, makes a parent unfit.” The caseworker acknowledged, however, that there was no evidence to prove drug abuse or that Lorencz was not in clear mind around his son when using medical cannabis.
Komorn further alleges that once Bethany Christian Services no longer had the pending criminal charges to use against his client, they “made other ridiculous claims” to keep his client’s son in foster care, including that he “plays lots of video games, his family is poor and his mother is ill.”
“Court hearings revealed that the behavior shown by Bethany Christian Services, including asking the child himself to choose between his parents and other living options, was contradictory to state procedures regarding foster care,” Komorn wrote in court documents. “The caseworker explicitly testified that she had not read or followed the (CPS’) policy. Instead . . . she follows Bethany Christian Services’ policy.”
The Republican tax reform bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate may end up including a repeal of 280E for state-licensed marijuana companies if a last-minute bipartisan amendment makes it into the legislation.
The amendment – offered by Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado – would essentially exempt cannabis companies from 280E as long as they’re in full compliance with state laws.
It’s a version of the Small Business Tax Equity Act, which was originally sponsored in the House by Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo and in the Senate by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden.
The 280E provision of the federal tax code has long been the financial bane of marijuana companies that have been trying to play by the rules while also turning a profit.
The provision prevents MJ companies from taking standard federal tax deductions that are allowed for every other legal industry, so cannabis businesses typically end up paying a 70%-90% federal tax rate.
A number of pro-marijuana industry groups were hard at work Thursday lobbying senators to support the amendment, as the upper chamber went into what will likely be the final days of debate on the tax bill before a final vote.
“To help this amendment succeed, senators need to hear from you!” the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) wrote in an email blast to its members.
Neal Levine, chairman of the marijuana industry organization the New Federalism Fund – which has been working almost exclusively on a 280E repeal for the MJ industry – said the amendment “has a real chance to pass,” in large part because of bipartisan support from members of Congress.
By contrast, NCIA’s director of government relations, Michael Correia, said he was “hopeful” about the amendment’s chance and said it would be a heavy lift politically to get enough votes.
“It’ll be a challenge to see if we can get 51 senators to support this,” Correia said.
Americans for Tax Reform, headed by the conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, is also throwing its support behind Gardner’s amendment and is lobbying senators to back the measure, sources told Marijuana Business Daily.
There are 3 related articles from Dec 2016 / Oct 2017 / Dec 2017
DEC 2016
Woman who ran marijuana dispensary charged with several felonies, including racketeering
John Hogan, WZZM11:39 PM. EST December 15, 2016
PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP, MICH. – A Comstock Park woman police say ran an illegal medical marijuana dispensary is facing several felony charges stemming from a late November raid at the Plainfield Township facility.
Charges against 51-year-old Susan M. Bond include conducting a criminal enterprise and criminal enterprises – racketeering proceeds; both are 20-year felonies. Police seized several pounds of marijuana during a Nov. 28 raid at The Provision Center, which also was known as Michigan Relief Hub, according to court records.
Bond told investigators the business generated about $1,000 a day, Kent County Sheriff’s Lt. Al Roetman said.
“She has been running a criminal enterprise in our opinion,’’ Roetman said. “The ones that have been running are not legal.’’
The business, located on Plainfield Avenue north of Five Mile Road NE, was among seven locations visited by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team on Nov. 28. As of now, Bond is the only person to be charged. A state police drug enforcement task force raided the business in Nov. 2015, Roetman said.
Criminal charges were appropriate because Bond received prior warning that the dispensary was operating illegally, Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Boer said.
“We did send her a letter quite a while ago indicating that she was operating outside the law and we asked her to stop doing it,’’ Boer said. “We do this in a progression and this was handled no differently.’’
In addition to racketeering and conducting a criminal enterprise, Bond faces two counts of delivery/manufacture of marijuana, a four-year felony, and maintaining a drug house, which carries a two-year term.
Bond on Wednesday waived a probable cause hearing in 63rd District Court, sending the case to Kent County Circuit Court for trial. She is free on a $50,000 bond.
Police also raided a building on Taylor Avenue near Leonard Street NW linked to Bond. Deputies found business records and proceeds linked to the Plainfield Township dispensary, court records show.
A man interviewed by detectives said he moved records and proceeds to the Grand Rapids location “in an attempt to hide his and Susan Bond’s connection to the business,’’ according to a probable cause affidavit in 63rd District Court. The man, who has not been charged, said Bond owned the business and he served as manager.
To build their criminal case against Bond, detectives conducted several controlled buys of marijuana at the business. A detective from the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team was in the store during one of the buys; Bond was also there, court records show.
Bond may have inadvertently helped investigators build their case against her. She attempted to file an embezzlement complaint with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department against a former manager “stating that the former manager stole medical marijuana from the Provision Center,’’ court records show. She also said that she takes 20 percent of the proceeds from the sale of marijuana “for her paralegal services at the Provision Center,’’ court records show.
Gov. Rick Snyder in September signed legislation that will allow medical marijuana dispensaries beginning next year so long as local ordinances allow them to operate.
As the law now stands, they’re still illegal, Boer said.
“You have to be a licensed caregiver, you can only have five people that you are a caregiver for,’’ he said. “These dispensaries think they can be a caregiver to anyone and that’s just not the case.’’
OCT 2017
Marijuana dispensary operator convicted of racketeering, faces two decades in prison
GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. (WZZM) – A woman accused of running an illegal medical marijuana dispensary north of Grand Rapids was convicted Thursday of numerous felony charges that could put her in prison for up to 20 years.
Kent County jurors found 52-year-old Susan M. Bond guilty of five charges, including conducting a criminal enterprise and racketeering, for a business shuttered last year on Plainfield Avenue near Five Mile Road NE.
The jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon. They reached a verdict mid-afternoon Thursday.
Kent County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Rossi, who presided over the two-week trial, ordered she be held on a $100,000 bond pending her sentencing date in mid-November.
Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Boer said Bond headed a multi-million-dollar marijuana business in Kent County’s Plainfield Township. The Provision Center was among seven locations visited by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team on Nov. 28.
Defense attorney Michael Komorn said Bond did nothing illegal. The investigation was launched after Bond called police to report embezzlement from her business, he told jurors.
“And they flip it around and make it a mobster crime,’’ Komorn said in opening statements last week. “At no point are you going to hear that my client delivered marijuana to anybody.’’
Members of the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team launched the probe in the summer of 2016. Between Aug. 1 and Oct. 14, 2016, the business took in more than $647,000; Bond pocketed about $137,000, Boer said.
Bond used proceeds to pay rent and salaries and invest in supplies, Boer told jurors.
She was found guilty of racketeering and conducting a criminal enterprise – felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Jurors also convicted Bond of two counts of delivery/manufacture of marijuana, a four-year felony, and maintaining a drug house, which carries a two-year term.
DEC 2017
WOMAN WHO RAN MARIJUANA DISPENSARY GETS JAIL, $25,000 FINE FOR RACKETEERING
Author:John Hogan
Published:7:00 PM EST December 6, 2017
A woman convicted of running an illegal medical marijuana dispensary north of Grand Rapids was sentenced Wednesday to a year in jail and placed on probation for three years.
A woman convicted of running an illegal medical marijuana dispensary north of Grand Rapids was sentenced Wednesday to a year in jail and placed on probation for three years.
A Kent County jury in October found Susan Maria Bond guilty of racketeering and conducting a criminal enterprise for a marijuana dispensary authorities say raked in millions of dollars.
In addition to jail and probation, Kent County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Rossi slapped her with a $25,000 fine. The judge also ordered that Bond perform 50 hours of community service.
Bond, 52, was facing up to 20 years in prison for racketeering and conducting a criminal enterprise. Terms of her sentence allows for possible early release from jail.
Kent County jurors found the 52-year-old paralegal guilty of five charges for a business shuttered last year on Plainfield Avenue near Five Mile Road NE. Her trial lasted two weeks.
Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Boer said Bond headed the multi-million-dollar marijuana business in Kent County’s Plainfield Township. The Provision Center was among seven locations visited by the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team in November, 2016.
Defense attorney Michael Komorn said Bond did nothing illegal. The investigation was launched after Bond called police to report embezzlement from her business, he said.
Members of the Kent Area Narcotics Enforcement Team launched the probe in the summer of 2016. Between Aug. 1 and Oct. 14, 2016, the business took in more than $647,000; Bond pocketed about $137,000, Boer said.
Bond used proceeds to pay rent and salaries and invest in supplies, Boer said.
In addition to racketeering and conducting a criminal enterprise, jurors convicted Bond of two counts of delivery/manufacture of marijuana, a four-year felony, and maintaining a drug house, which carries a two-year term.
Lansing — Gov. Rick Snyder signed emergency rules Monday allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to stay open after Dec. 15 without affecting their chances of getting a state license in certain circumstances.
Under one of dozens of new medical marijuana administrative rules Snyder approved, marijuana pot shops that were approved by their local municipal government prior to Dec. 15 can stay open until the state issues or denies them a license. That’s the same date dispensaries, growers and other pot enterprises can submit applications to the state to operate legally.
A 2013 Supreme Court decision ruled that dispensaries are illegal under state law. But many in Ann Arbor, Detroit and Lansing have not been targeted by State Police, while regional narcotics teams led by the state agency have cracked down in other areas of Michigan.
A 2016 overhaul to the state’s 2008 voter-approved Medical Marihuana Act allowed the department to craft the new rules as Michigan tries to transition to a fully legal medical marijuana business nearly 10 years later.
According to the order, not issuing the emergency rules would “have a detrimental effect on the necessity for access to a safe source of marihuana for medical use and the immediate need for growers, processors, secure transporters, provision centers, and safety compliance facilities to operate under clear requirements.”
The emergency rules are aimed at keeping existing medical marijuana shops open temporarily, so long as they’ve also received local government approval. They come after a member of a state board charged with issuing licenses originally threatened this summer to close them down.
The new emergency rules also established what many in the industry consider to be hefty start-up capital requirements. Growers must prove they have $150,000 to $500,000 in capital depending on the size of their farm. Dispensaries and processors must prove they have $300,000 in capital, while transporters and safety compliance businesses must have $200,000.
Applicants also must pay a $6,000 application fee and have an additional $100,000 in insurance. The rules also create product rules establishing limits for THC, the main psychoactive element in marijuana.
Michael Gerstein, The Detroit News Published 3:27 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2017 | Updated 3:46 p.m. ET Dec. 4, 2017
If you are pulled over in one of five Michigan counties and a police officer believes you’re impaired by drugs, you could be asked to submit your saliva to be tested.
A Michigan State Police official explained the process for the state’s new roadside drug testing pilot program that begins Wednesday, Nov. 8, in Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair and Washtenaw counties, that runs for one year.
Drug Recognition Experts (DREs), with specialized training in the signs of drug impairment, will carry handheld devices to test for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva.
Despite the new tool, police will continue to follow established procedures during traffic stops to check for drug impairment, MSP First Lt. Jim Flegel said.
“They’re not going to be randomly pulling people over, they have to have a valid reason,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for things like weaving in their lane, driving too fast, driving too slow, not using your turn signals — indicators that would indicate that somebody’s driving while impaired.”
After making a traffic stop, police would still have to establish probable cause for impairment, he said, by performing field sobriety tests.
“The only difference with the pilot program is if they determine they’re impaired on some type of drug, they’re going to ask them to submit to the oral fluid swab,” Flegel said.
The Alere DDS2 oral fluid test instrument will be used to measure for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva, Michigan State Police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said
Marijuana continues to be regulated by Congress as a dangerous drug, and as the Supreme Court has recognized, the federal prohibition of marijuana takes precedence over state laws to the contrary.
The primacy of federal law over state law is hardly a novel proposition and has been the rule since the ratification of the Constitution. Thus, whenever a marijuana business files for bankruptcy relief, a threshold question is whether the debtor can be granted relief consistent with the Bankruptcy Code and other federal law. If the answer to that question is no, the United States Trustee Program (USTP), in its role as the watchdog of the bankruptcy system, will move to dismiss.
Illegal enterprises simply do not come through the doors of the bankruptcy courthouse seeking help to further their criminal activities. To obtain bankruptcy relief, some may try to hide the nature of their business or income, but bankruptcy courts require full financial disclosure and are not a hospitable forum for continuing a fraudulent or criminal scheme.
Marijuana businesses are a unique and unprecedented exception to this rule because they often involve companies that openly propose to continue their illegal activity during and after the bankruptcy. Those cases present a challenge to the bankruptcy system because they generally involve assets that are illegal even to possess. In contrast to other types of cases involving illegal businesses, in which the criminal activity has already terminated and the principal concern of the bankruptcy court is to resolve competing claims by victims for compensation, a marijuana bankruptcy case may involve a company that not only is continuing in its business, but is even seeking the affirmative assistance of the bankruptcy court in order to reorganize its balance sheet and thereby facilitate its violations of the law going forward.
The USTP’s response to marijuana-related bankruptcy filings is guided by two straightforward and uncontroversial principles. First, the bankruptcy system may not be used as an instrument in the ongoing commission of a crime and reorganization plans that permit or require continued illegal activity may not be confirmed. Second, bankruptcy trustees and other estate fiduciaries should not be required to administer assets if doing so would cause them to violate federal criminal law.
The USTP’s policy of seeking dismissal of marijuana bankruptcy cases that cannot lawfully be administered is not a new one, but rather it is a policy that has been applied consistently over two presidential administrations and under three Attorneys General. Nor are these concerns unique to marijuana. These same principles would also guide the USTP’s response in a case involving any other type of ongoing criminal conduct or administration of illegal property.
Although a recent ABI Journal article2 takes the USTP to task for its marijuana enforcement efforts, it is noteworthy that the author fully agrees with the USTP’s position as to the first of the two principles described above and appears to agree to a significant extent with the second. As the author concedes, “it hardly needs explanation that a bankruptcy court should not supervise an ongoing criminal enterprise regardless of its status under state law.”3 As to the second principle, “[i]t would obviously violate federal law for the trustee to sell marijuana.”
Given these concessions, the author’s disagreement with the USTP’s position would appear to be limited to a fairly narrow range of cases – those where administration of the estate would not require the trustee to sell marijuana (but would require the trustee to administer other marijuana-derived property), or where the debtor is a “downstream” participant in a marijuana business, such as a lessor of a building used for a marijuana dispensary.
Yet under the CSA, there is no distinction between the seller or the grower of marijuana and the supposedly more “downstream” participants whom the article proposes to protect: all are in violation of federal criminal law. In particular,
section 856 of the CSA specifically prohibits knowingly renting, managing, or using property “for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance;” section 863 of the CSA makes it a crime to sell or offer for sale any drug paraphernalia – which is defined to include, among other things, “equipment, product, or material of any kind which is primarily intended or designed for use” in manufacturing a controlled substance; and section 855 provides for a fine against a person “who derives profits or proceeds from an offense [of the CSA].”
Thus, not only would a trustee who offers marijuana for sale violate the law but so, too, would a trustee who liquidated the fertilizer or equipment used to grow marijuana, who collected rent from a marijuana business tenant, or who sought to collect the profits of a marijuana investment.
Although cases involving illicit proceeds of Ponzi schemes and other criminal activities – seen in such notorious cases as Enron, Dreier LLP, and Madoff – are administered in bankruptcy, they deal with the aftermath of fraud, usually after individual wrongdoers had been removed from the business.
Such cases are wholly inapposite analogies to a marijuana case where the illegal activity is still continuing through the bankruptcy administration process and where bankruptcy relief may allow the company to expand its violations of law in the future. Nor do any of those cases involve proposed chapter 11 and 13 plans where the feasibility of the plan itself is directly premised on the continued receipt of profits from an illegal enterprise. And none of them requires the courts or trustees to deal with property of the kind described in the CSA, for which mere possession is a federal crime.
Similarly, although the author cites two decades-old decisions in support of his claim that “courts have not always shied away from handling marijuana-related bankruptcies,”7 it is noteworthy that neither of those decisions involved active marijuana operations or would have required a bankruptcy trustee to administer any illegal marijuana assets.8 Both Chapman and Kurth Ranch involved bankruptcy cases that were filed after law enforcement had arrested and seized the assets of marijuana growers. The legal issues raised by the current wave of marijuana filings were simply not present in those cases – neither case involved an ongoing violation of law, and in neither case were there any marijuana assets to be administered, because all illegal assets had been seized and disposed of prepetition.
Finally, the article suggests that the “ongoing conflict over marijuana policy” is one that should take place outside the bankruptcy system. The USTP agrees. But that does not mean that the USTP or the courts should turn a blind eye to bankruptcy filings by marijuana businesses. Rather than make its own marijuana policy, the USTP will continue to enforce the legislative judgment of Congress by preventing the bankruptcy system from being used for purposes that Congress has determined are illegal.
Written by: Clifford J. White III Director, Executive Office for U.S. Trustees Washington, DC
John Sheahan Trial Attorney, Executive Office for U.S. Trustees Washington, DC
