The parent company of West Coast Cure (WCC), one of California’s largest and most well-known marijuana brands, has filed a petition to dismiss a class action lawsuit that claims the operator skirted state regulations and sold unsafe vape products that contained banned pesticides.
WeedWeek first reported the development, in which Shield Management Group, doing business as WCC, is named as defendant.
The class action lawsuit, filed in June by a WCC customer in Superior Court of the State of California in Orange County, alleged the company deliberately manipulated test results “to hide dangerous contaminants in the products” and issued inaccurate certificates of analysis.
WCC did not immediately respond to an MJBizDaily request for comment.
The Orange County-based company, which sells an extensive line of flower strains, concentrates, edibles and vape products at hundreds of California retail outlets, has been engulfed in a pesticide scandal that has eroded confidence in the world’s largest regulated marijuana market.
The brand was linked to several contaminated marijuana products in a June Los Angeles Times-WeedWeek report highlighting the presence of illegal pesticides.
Since that report, the state’s Department of Cannabis Control has issued several recalls of WCC products, primarily for allegedly containing the banned pesticide chlorfenapyr.
The company has told MJBizDaily that every product it brings to market has passed lab testing.
Products that fail testing are destroyed, WCC said.
