A husband and wife team that owns a locally licensed dispensary in Michigan is considering suing the county whose officers raided their home 19 months ago, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Annette and Dale Shattuck assert that even though the St. Claire County Drug Task Force returned most of the property it seized from the family in July 2014 after a raid, it’s not enough to compensate for the wrongs committed against them. Not all their belongings were returned, some of what was returned was damaged, and – most importantly – the raid traumatized their young children.
Instead, county officers raided the Shattuck’s home and later charged them with criminal possession of marijuana and intent to distribute.
But a circuit court judge threw out the charges against the couple, saying that one government entity can’t prosecute someone or a business for certain behavior after it received permission from another government entity to engage that behavior.
The case could become a precedent-setting one, given that there are numerous other dispensaries in the state operating with some level of government approval, even though Michigan still has no statewide medical cannabis industry regulations. And raids on dispensaries have been ongoing for years.
