Welcome to The Scuttlebutt, powered by Armada Law Corp., where we share important, inspiring or interesting news related to the California cannabis, hemp or plant medicine industries. In today’s news……
#californiacannabis – “New reporting from CapRadio has uncovered further details about how the city has operated its controversial enforcement system:
A review of more than 40 search warrant affidavits from 2018 and 2019 shows how the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) routinely sent the Sacramento Police Department lists of customers who used unusually high amounts of electricity, which can indicate an illegal cannabis grow.
Police launched investigations into individual addresses based on the lists, which were broken down by zip code. Police often conducted minimal in-person surveillance into the suspected grow homes, underscoring the importance of the bulk data handed over by SMUD.
SMUD readily provided police with detailed electrical information on customers who lived next to suspected marijuana grow houses but were not under investigation. Police used this data to compare with homes under investigation and included the information in publicly-available search warrant applications.
In court documents, police disclosed sensitive information — such as Social Security and passport numbers — of people associated with suspected grow houses, including property owners who claimed innocence and later had penalties cleared. SMUD provided police with at least some of this personal information about its customers…..”
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#cannabislaw – “A freight broker has for now escaped claims that it is part of an alleged multimillion-dollar “counterfeit network” producing knockoff Cake brand Delta-8 THC vaping products after a California federal judge ruled that the accusations are simply conclusory at this point.
U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna, who has proceeded over a number of Cake-related intellectual property cases, said on Wednesday that AK Futures LLC, the California company behind the Cake products, missed the mark when it claimed that transport middleman Mothership Technologies Inc. directly participated in all the same copyright infringement actions as the other companies accused in the lawsuit.
“AK Futures concedes that Mothership ‘does not do the transporting itself,'” Judge Selna said in his order. “Instead, [AK Futures] complains that much like Uber, Mothership ’causes contraband to be transported’ by ‘matching transportation companies to shipments needed on a regular basis to distribute contraband to ‘distros.’ These factual assertions do not support a claim for direct copyright infringement.””
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