Supreme Court sides with truck driver who said CBD got him fired

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a truck driver who lost his job after taking a hemp-based supplement.

In a 5-4 decision, the court said Douglas Horn can use an anti-racketeering law to sue the supplement manufacturer he said falsely advertised its “new CBD-rich medicine” as not containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Horn said the supplement, Dixie X, caused him to fail a drug test and he should be able to use a federal law created to fight organized crime to recover lost wages. 

Under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Horn could get triple damages and attorney fees if he can prove his case.

The manufacturer, Medical Marijuana Inc., argued that RICO can’t be used to sue for personal injuries, only for harm to “business or property.”

Horn contended that the harm was to his ability to earn a living, which meets the plain definition of “business.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Medical Marijuana "tried valiantly to engineer a rule that yields its preferred outcomes."

"When all is said and done, Medical Marijuana is left fighting the most natural interpretation of the text − that 'injured' means 'harmed' − with no plausible alternative in hand," she wrote. "That is a battle it cannot win."

Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.

"This case should have been reasonably straightforward. RICO does not authorize personal-injury suits − period," Kavanaugh wrote in a dissent joined by Alito and Roberts. "That is true even when a personal injury leads to losses related to one's business or property, as personal injuries often do."

During the October oral arguments, some conservative justices expressed concern that allowing that interpretation would open the floodgates to the types of lawsuits the law wasn’t intended to cover.

That was also a point raised in a legal filing by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which urged the court to rule against Horn. Otherwise, the group said, there will be “devastating consequences” from increasing businesses’ exposure to lawsuits.

The truck driver’s lawyers argued there are still significant hurdles for using RICO.

Anyone making a claim has to show a pattern of racketeering activity and that the illegal activities caused the injury, Easha Anand, an attorney for Horn, told the Supreme Court.

Created primarily to fight organized crime, RICO was seldom used until a 1981 Supreme Court decision expanded its interpretation to apply to both legitimate and illegitimate enterprises, according to Jeffrey Grell, an expert on the law who previewed the case for the American Bar Association.

But after the federal courts were deluged with RICO cases, the Supreme Court has tried to limit its application.

The case is Medical Marijuana Inc. v. Horn.

by USA Today