DECISION ON MEDIGROW INJUNCTION NOT DUE FOR AT LEAST A WEEK

A decision about whether a moratorium on medical marijuana
dispensaries by the Windsor Town Board is constitutional will have to wait.

Weld District Court Judge James Hartmann heard two hours of testimony
Thursday concerning whether he should grant Windsor an injunction
against MediGrow dispensary, but with nearly four hours of Town Board
meeting recordings still to listen to, Hartmann said his written
ruling won't come for at least a week.

The town of Windsor asked the Weld District Court judge to issue an
injunction against Lazarus Pino, owner of MediGrow, 1292 Main St.
Unit 1, for continuing to operate his dispensary against a moratorium
put in place in December.

Pino's attorney Daniel Taylor of Wheatridge, asked Hartmann to
dismiss the request based on the same claims he argued in Windsor
Municipal Court last month, arguments Taylor says make the moratorium
unconstitutional.

Windsor Municipal Court Judge Michael E. Manning shot down those arguments.

Windsor passed the emergency ordinance on Dec. 16, but allowed two
dispensaries to remain open.

MediGrow was told not to open, but Pino had already opened three days
earlier and continues to operate against the ordinance.

The Town began citing Pino the next day for violating the ordinance.
In addition, he is receiving citations for building code violations.
Both carry fines of up to $300 a day.

Taylor says there are at least four different violations of local,
state and federal laws, including failure to provide proper notice of
a public meeting and enacting an emergency ordinance where no
emergency existed; hampering, by unreasonable and arbitrary
governmental interference, one's right to engage in a lawful
business; equal protection; and retroactive law making.

Most of Thursday's hearing focused on the equal protection and
retroactive law making portions.

Pino believes the Town Board allowed two other dispensaries to remain
open although he was further through the building permit process than
either In Harmony Wellness or A New Dawn Wellness.

At issue in the equal protection argument are town building codes
that require a certain amount of outside air to be filtered into the
business. At the time of the ordinance, none of the three
dispensaries had the system in place. A New Dawn has since come into
compliance, and In Harmony has not applied for a building permit yet,
McCargar told Hartmann.

Additionally under the moratorium, only those businesses in operation
for five days or longer at the time of enactment were allowed to remain open.

"The moratorium punishes past conduct that sets forth a requirement
that can't be met," Taylor said. "The other dispensaries have been
operating illegally also, just for a longer period of time. That
makes no sense."

Hartmann appeared to have concerns on both sides of the case, first
questioning McCargar on what made the moratorium an emergency and if
all three dispensaries were operating illegally at the time of the moratorium.

"What was the emergency that happened between the 14th and the 16th
of December," Hartmann asked McCargar in reference to a vote on the
moratorium that failed on first attempt but then passed during a
special meeting. "The same members of the board voted on the 16th
that voted on the 14th, but the vote was different only two days later?"

McCargar explained the emergency was in place on both dates, that
only the wording of the ordinance changed. That was done to get it
to pass, McCargar said.

McCargar said that on the 16th, only A New Dawn and MediGrow were not
compliant, but that A New Dawn had been told by the town that it
could open before the building was brought to code.

Hartmann then told Taylor that he wasn't convinced the equal
protection argument was proven.

"If he opens even though he is in direct violation of the law, should
he be considered to be in the same situation as the others?" Hartmann
said. "Doesn't that put the municipalities at the whims of the
citizens rather than the ordinances?"