I believe in the law. I always have. It’s the foundation you build a company on; it’s the foundation our country was built on — it’s supposed to be the thing that protects you when you play by the rules. I’ve learned a lot about the law by building companies, and I believe that nothing is standard as long as you have legal documents to back it up. But somewhere along the way, using the law became a luxury product.
The first time I needed legal representation, I had to sue someone over owed commissions. My lawyer said to me, “Congratulations, you are an adult now,” because when you need legal representation, it doesn’t matter if you did nothing wrong. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to win. You still have to pay — often hundreds of thousands of dollars — just to get to the moment where you’re proven right. A disgruntled employee. A union fight. A lawsuit that’s obviously frivolous. Doesn’t matter. You need representation, because the alternative is worse. And real representation, from lawyers who actually know how to fight, costs a fortune.
We were recently in an eight-year lawsuit, one in which, from the start, we were happy to pay the amount we believed was owed to the company on the other side. When the suit finally came to a close, the amount we were required to pay was exactly what we had suggested in the first place. The biggest losers were both us and the people who sued us because nothing changed except the amount we all paid for representation.
What are the options? Pay the amount you are sued for. Go out of business. Or find a nonprofit lawyer doing the work out of the goodness of their heart because they can’t charge what it’s actually worth. That’s not a functioning system. That’s a system that filters out anyone without deep pockets — regardless of who’s right.
Gotham, our business is in cannabis, one of the most regulated, most litigated industries there is. If anyone else in this industry had spent what we’ve spent on lawyers just to stay in business while doing the right thing, they’d be gone. And we’ve done nothing wrong. That’s the part that gets me. I can’t write this without pointing at the obvious. We just watched a president spend his entire life treating the legal system as a delay tactic — burying people in motions not to win on the merits, but to outlast them financially. That’s not justice; that’s leverage. If the law can be weaponized that well by someone with unlimited resources, what chance does an honest small business have against even a modest frivolous claim?
To be clear — I’m not anti-lawyer. I get what goes into it: years of training, memorizing, and learning how to read and apply the law, which continues to evolve through rulings. That expertise has real value. But there’s a difference between paying for expertise and paying a toll just to stay in business while doing nothing wrong. Right now, small businesses are paying that toll constantly. And the only guaranteed winner, years later, is the lawyers on both sides.
How do we fix this? I don’t have the answer. I hope that AI will help, as writing a motion will more than likely be done better and more quickly by technology. Regardless, something is seriously wrong with a system where being right isn’t enough — where you either pay, fold, or get lucky enough to find someone willing to help you for less than they’re worth. If we actually want small businesses and people without deep pockets to do the right thing and survive doing so, this has to be part of the conversation.
