John Sawyer

You don’t anticipate getting hurt due to someone else’s negligence or crime when you leave the house. Accidents, however, cause more harm than just physical injury.

Many victims have financial difficulties as a result of lost time at work and medical expenses incurred as a result of their injury.

A major personal injury can be traumatic and devastating to your life. You also have to deal with medical bills, paperwork, and insurance companies, all of which can be burdensome while you’re trying to focus on your rehabilitation.

Handling a personal injury claims on your own can be tough, and it may result in a smaller settlement, a lengthy claims procedure, or no compensation at all if not handled properly.

In any personal injury case, an attorney is essential. Despite the fact that many accidents are covered by insurance policies, insurers are often unwilling to pay claims and will try to reduce the amount paid in any manner they can.

The Advantages of Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer

A personal injury lawyer is an attorney who defends injured accident victims in negligence claims. A personal injury lawyer can assist you in recovering compensation for your losses while also taking on the burden of communicating with the insurance company.

By approaching you shortly after the accident, when stress and uncertainty are at their highest, an insurer may try to persuade you to accept a small percentage of what you are owed.

In order to maximize your damages, you’ll need to hire a personal injury lawyer. A lawyer can not only determine who is to blame for an accident, but also compile a clear and convincing record of facts to support that claim.

A lawyer can provide you with the necessary information and help to successfully prosecute the at-fault party.

Time and Money Savings

Hiring a personal injury lawyer could help you save time during your claim. A lawyer will ensure that you follow the legal processes of the letter.

Avoiding mistakes while filing your claim can reduce back and forth between you and the insurance provider, making the legal procedure more efficient.

You could also get more money if you hire an attorney to help you negotiate a settlement. An insurance carrier’s lowball settlement offer will not be accepted by a lawyer.

Instead, your lawyer will advocate for the highest possible compensation for your losses, assisting you in receiving a higher award.

Your Injury Claim Is Valued Correctly

Knowing how much your injury claim is worth can be difficult, especially if you are unfamiliar with personal injury laws.

To settle your claim, the insurance company will pay as little as possible. The claims adjuster will not tell you whether you are being underpaid.

Your claim is valued by a personal injury lawyer based on your financial losses and non-economic damages.

An attorney knows how to maximize non-economic or pain and suffering damages by utilizing the evidence in your case.

The Process of Filing a Personal Injury Claim

Navigating the personal injury claim procedure without assistance may be tough and confusing, and a single blunder can result in delayed or drastically reduced compensation.

A personal injury lawyer will assist you to gather facts and information, interacting with law enforcement, and comprehending responsibility rules, among other things.

Furthermore, an experienced personal injury lawyer is usually familiar with local courts, which can help speed up the claims procedure.

Your personal injury attorney will take you through the rest of the claims procedure if you correctly and honestly describe the specifics of your accident.

In Court Representation

If you are unable to reach an agreement, your only remaining alternative is to launch a lawsuit, which must be addressed in court. You will need a specialist on your side to plead your case in these instances.

While you may choose to represent yourself, the defending party will almost surely have a professional litigator on their side, and if you want to stand a chance, you’ll need a personal injury attorney with similar experience.

 No Fees if You Lose Your Case.

Most personal injury lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, which means you won’t have to pay anything if they don’t win for you, and if they do win, the fees will be deducted from the compensation, so there’s no need to pay anything upfront.

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John Sawyer

John Sawyer is a legal expert and writer with over 30 years of experience in the field of law. Throughout his career, John Sawyer has worked on a wide range of legal cases. He is passionate about educating people on their legal rights and helping them navigate the complexities of the legal system.

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After we discussed TCPA claims in our last webinar, we received a few follow-up questions relating to the somewhat recent Supreme Court decision in Barr v. American Ass’n of Political Consultants (“Political Consultants”) and its impact on TCPA claims going forward. Here’s the deal:

Political Consultants is not really going to have an effect on the TCPA lawsuits that are currently rocking the cannabis industry. (See my recent posts on the topic, here and here.) In Political Consultants, one narrow issue before the Supreme Court was whether the government-debt exception to the TCPA’s “automated call” restriction violated the First Amendment – and if it did violate, whether the appropriate remedy would be to invalidate the call restriction completely.

The Supreme Court could have decided this inquiry in its entirety, but it instead severed the government-debt exception from the remainder of the statute in its analysis and narrowly decided that only the government-debt exception violates the First Amendment. Because the Supreme Court left the call restriction otherwise intact, Political Consultants is not going to have any impact on the cannabis industry: the government-debt exception isn’t at issue in any of the pending cases around the country.

There is still hope for some – a lesser known case, Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid (“Duguid”), is also currently before the Supreme Court on the issue of whether the definition of an ATDS “encompasses any device that can ‘store’ and ‘automatically dial’ telephone numbers, even if the device does not ‘us[e] a random or sequential number generator.’” Currently, the Circuits are split on this issue – the Third, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuits read the TCPA to apply only to devices with the capacity to generate random or sequential telephone numbers and dial those numbers. The Ninth and Second Circuits have held that “the statutory definition of ATDS is not limited to devices with the capacity to call numbers produced by a ‘random or sequential number generator, but also includes devices with the capacity to dial stored numbers automatically.” Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041, 1052 (9th Cir. 2018).

What does this mean? In cases where the plaintiff only asserts that the defendant made phone calls or sent texts from lists of customer data, rather than through randomly generated numbers, Duguid could completely gut the value of those claims.

Due to the pendency of Duguid, a notable trend in TCPA litigation is the defendant’s filing of a motion to “stay” – a mechanism by which a case can be paused for a definite (or indefinite) period of time. Courts have generally held that stay requests are reasonable where a Supreme Court decision expected in the following term could moot some or all issues in the case. Other courts have denied a stay outright, but chose to limit the parties’ discovery to issues that would not be mooted by a forthcoming decision.

Defendants in these TCPA claims would do well to evaluate whether requesting a stay makes sense under the specific facts of their case. This move might ultimately be nothing more than kicking the can down the road, but it may help a ton given the uncertain economic situation most are facing.

What does all of this mean of readers? If you are a cannabis business working with a marketing company or other vendor on “direct contact” outreach, don’t hesitate to give us a call to ensure that you are on the right side of the law here. Alternatively, if you have been on the receiving end of any automated dial or text campaigns, please email me at jihee@harrisbricken.com to share your experience and discuss whether taking action could be warranted.

John Sawyer

John Sawyer is a legal expert and writer with over 30 years of experience in the field of law. Throughout his career, John Sawyer has worked on a wide range of legal cases. He is passionate about educating people on their legal rights and helping them navigate the complexities of the legal system.

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On Friday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) released an Interim Final Rule (the “Rule”) that, as we discussed, threatens the hemp industry by treating partially processed hemp extract not intended for consumption (also known as “intermediary hemp”) as a Schedule I controlled substance. This is hugely problematic because intermediary hemp is an essential and necessary component of the industry.

In addition, the Rule addresses the legality of “synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols,” which could also impact the hemp industry. Specifically, the Rule provides that:

For tetrahydrocannabinols that are naturally occurring constituents of the plant material, Cannabis sativa L., any material that contains 0.3% or less of D9 -THC by dry weight is not controlled, unless specifically controlled elsewhere under the CSA. Conversely, for tetrahydrocannabinols that are naturally occurring constituents of Cannabis sativa L., any such material that contains greater than 0.3% of D9 -THC by dry weight remains a controlled substance in schedule I. The [2018 Farm Bill] does not impact the control status of synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols (for Controlled Substance Code Number 7370) because the statutory definition of “hemp” is limited to materials that are derived from the plant Cannabis sativa L. For synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols, the concentration of D9 -THC is not a determining factor in whether the material is a controlled substance. All synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols remain schedule I controlled substances.
(Emphasis added).

Neither the Rule nor Federal law, including the federal Controlled Substances Act (the “CSA”), expressly define “synthetically derived tetrahydrocannabinols.” However, some of the DEA regulations address the issue of “synthetic THC” in the context of (1) “synthetic marijuana,” also known as “Spice” or “K2,” which is listed under Section 812(c)(d) of the CSA; and (2) the schedule I listing of “Tetrahydrocannabinol” (“THC”), under Section 812(c)(c)(17) of the CSA.

In the context of “synthetic marijuana,” which the DEA describes as a “synthetic version of THC,” “synthetic THC” refers to a mixture of plant material sprayed with synthetic psychoactive chemicals. In a 2017 Resource Guide, the DEA further explains that “[s]ynthetic cannabinoids are not organic, but are chemical compounds created in a laboratory.” (Emphasis added).

In the context of the schedule I listing of “Tetrahydrocannabinol,” the DEA revised its regulations in 2003 to specify that the term refers to both “natural” and “synthetic” THC; however, the agency’s clarification did not touch on the actual meaning of “synthetic.”

Therefore, based on the information found in the DEA regulations and publications, it appears the agency refers to the ordinary meaning of “synthetic,” which the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines as a substance “relating to, or produced by chemical or biochemical synthesis.” As a result, this definition suggests that the Rule, specifically the text in bold above, may extend to hemp-derived THC cannabinoids with a Delta-9 THC concentration that does not exceed 0.3%.

This, in turn, would mean that the hottest cannabinoid currently found on the U.S. market, Delta-8 THC, would probably be treated as a schedule I controlled substance by the DEA. This is because Delta-8 THC, which is not expressed in sufficient concentrations in most hemp cultivars to make its extraction economically viable, is produced through a chemical reaction initiation by a catalyst that converts hemp-derived CBD (“Hemp CBD”). As such, Delta-8 THC would be a “synthetically derived THC” substance, in accordance with the Rule.

Although such interpretation of the Rule would suggest a total disregard of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp, including hemp derivatives (a “derivative” is defined as “a substance that can be made from another substances”), it is also fairly clear that the 2018 Farm Bill did not intend to legalize any form of cannabis that gets users high. And that is where the provisions regarding Delta-9 THC come in.

Moreover, given the similarities between Delta-8 THC and Delta-9 THC’s chemical structures, molecular formula and molecular weight, their psychoactive effects, and the DEA’s position on and its historical control of all forms of THC, the Rule only confirms what many of us expected: that hemp-derived cannabinoids with psychoactive effects, even if less potent than those of Delta-9 THC, would be deemed unlawful by federal enforcement groups.

Ultimately, the Rule and the issues raised in this blog post reveal that lingering confusion and statutory ambiguities should be addressed by Congress or by the courts before the DEA gets to adopt such regulations.

Consequently, hemp stakeholders should comment on the Rule through October 20 and reach out to their elected officials to help them understand the importance of these issues and the need to clarify the legality of all hemp-derived substances, including hemp-derived THC cannabinoids produced through a chemical synthesis, to help the hemp industry follow its course and succeed.

John Sawyer

John Sawyer is a legal expert and writer with over 30 years of experience in the field of law. Throughout his career, John Sawyer has worked on a wide range of legal cases. He is passionate about educating people on their legal rights and helping them navigate the complexities of the legal system.

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