The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation recently issued an ex parte cease-and-desist order to a winery based on concerns that the winery’s SEC Regulation D, Rule 506(b) exempted offering failed to disclose important facts concerning the winery’s lack of licensure. You can read the order in the link above. According to the order, a former employee’s attorney reached out to the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation regarding the winery’s business practices. A deputy commissioner checked the Vermont Liquor Control website and learned that the winery’s license was “pending” but not issued raising concerns and the belief that the winery operated…

The country-spanning impact of South Dakota v. Wayfair just hit the Illinois direct-to-consumer wine market. The Illinois Department of Revenue has announced that beginning January 1, Winery Shipper’s License holders with no physical presence in Illinois will need to remit the Illinois Retailer’s Occupation Tax provided they do not have a physical presence in Illinois and they meet the $100,000 in sales or 200+ transaction benchmark. This is in-line Wayfair’s determination that out-state retailers must abide by and pay in-state and local taxes when selling to residents of another state (provided perhaps that the thresholds of transactions or volume of…

The saga over “fizzy” named hard seltzers Brizzy and Vizzy added another chapter in favor of Molson Coors with this 5th Circuit opinion upholding the lower court’s denial of an injunction to Brizzy-maker, Future Proof Brands, in its attempt to keep Molson’s Vizzy from competing under that name. You can read our review of the lower court decision here, and here, find the briefs in this hard seltzer fight here. Note in our earlier discussions that we called this for Molson a while ago. The 5th Circuit agreed with the lower court on much of the…

Back in May of this year the Commerce Clause provided a substantial victory for cannabis companies looking to achieve fair-play amongst the states that have authorized cannabis programs and sales. An out-of-state company looking to obtain cannabis licensure in Maine successfully fought a state court action and settled with Maine regulators to stop enforcing residency requirements for state licensure. An activist group is currently attempting to defend the statutory requirement and force Maine regulators to enforce the residency requirements in a federal case, but a recent motion to dismiss their claims makes apparent that even Maine’s top officials agree the …

Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari that Wal-Mart had filed in its fight to overturn a 5th Circuit ruling that Texas retail liquor licensing rules and Wal-Mart’s case against them required further fact finding.  Initially, the District Court had agreed with Wal-Mart that the Texas ban on public companies owning liquor stores had a discriminatory intent against out-of-state interests violating the Commerce Clause. The 5th Circuit reversed that decision remanding the case for further fact-finding assessing that the District Court erred in applying the facts to precedent holding that simply having a history of prior discriminatory statutes…

You’ll recall that the court had recently dismissed this matter finding that Minhas’s second amended complaint (Mountain Crest SRL, LLC) had failed to allege Molson and Anhueser violated federal antitrust laws by conspiring to harm Minhas through their distribution and marketing practices at beer stores in Ontario, Canada. This was only after the Seventh Circuit had reversed an initial dismissal remanding for the lower court to make determinations about the second amended complaint for a detailed explanation from the court not regarding the challenges Minhas had brought over practices under the Ontario six-pack rule, but about whether Minhas had properly…

Omitting facts rarely ends well for people, let alone attorneys. Likewise, disregarding the law usually ends with a party on thin ice. So imagine the cringing surprise that hundreds of applicants for Illinois’ current round of adult use cannabis dispensary licenses felt upon reading this complaint filed by a few of the applicants that received the total points under the flawed scoring analysis conducted in the latest round of Illinois’ cannabis dispensary licensing. That cringe could have resulted from the use of the word “flagrantly” five times. But applicants are a hearty bunch, so the cringe really comes down to…