Pot Lab, City Head to Court Over Business License

An initial court hearing is scheduled for today over whether medicinal marijuana can be tested in a laboratory in Santa Monica for THC and contaminants.

Testing laboratory Golden State Collective is currently operating on Pennsylvania Avenue without a business license after the city denied its application in March. 

The owner of the facility, Richard McDonald, has asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to force Santa Monica to issue him the license under California's Compassionate Use and Medical Marijuana Program acts. He contends the measures allow Californians to "deal with" and use marijuana.

"There is a need in California for laboratories to test medical marijuana for certain purposes including a determination  as to potency and as to the existence of pesticides," the owner's attorney Roger Jon Diamond wrote in the collective's lawsuit.

In court today, the City Attorney's office will argue that McDonald's request for an injunction--a temporary order that would prevent Santa Monica from citing or prosecuting Golden State Collective for not operating without a license--should not be awarded. 

McDonald contends that he was assured in November 2011 by Santa Monica city staffers that a laboratory would be permissible if there were no human testing, storage or distribution on site.The testing process destroys the marijuana, he said.

The city, Diamond writes in court documents, "has no compelling or any legitimate reason to bat a laboratory such [as] the one proposed by [Golden State Collective]. Unless the court grants an immediate restraining order and preliminary injunction, as well as a permanent injunction, plaintiffs will not be able to function .. and their nonprofit business will be totally destroyed."

In the city of Los Angeles, pot shops are actually required have their marijuana tested and certified. Dozens of private testing labs like Golden State Collective started popping up two years ago in response to the mandate, according to the Los Angeles Times. But, as the paper notes, because marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law, the labs are just as vulnerable to prosecution as dispensaries.

But in her written response to Diamond's suit, City Attorney Marsha Jones Moutrie says the city is not obligated under either state nor federal law to issue the license.

Neither "the California Compassionate Use Act, Health and Safety Code, nor the California Medical Marijuana Program supports [their] demand that they be permitted to operate a free standing medical marijuana testing laboratory," she wrote.

McDonald "believed incorrectly" that he could open and operate without a license "or accreditation and effectively without any regulatory oversight," she wrote. All businesses operating in Santa Monica are required to obtain business licenses, and to pay a license tax.

"Their actions were fool hardly," Moutrie said of Golden State Collective.

Additionally, she argues that before McDonald filed his suit—a writ of mandate, a complaint for damages and petition for an injunction and declaratory relief—he never attempted to appeal the city's denial of license application, which she called "a fatal defect to [his] preliminary injunction request."

Stay up to date on Santa Monica news and events by following @StaMonicaPatch and “liking” us on Facebook.