Truck was returned, driver took plea deal. Now Idaho courts will decide hemp case.
A Colorado company lost control of $1.3 million in industrial hemp when Idaho State Police seized a truck carrying it through Idaho in late January — and now the legal battle for it is going to play out in state court, rather than federal court.
An attorney for Big Sky Scientific LLC told the Statesman that the company plans to file its opening brief in 4th District Court on Wednesday.
Big Sky officials have no idea where the hemp is being stored or its condition eight months after it was seized, Boise-based attorney Elijah Watkins said Tuesday.
“We’ve asked several times to be able to inspect the hemp, to see if it’s being stored properly,” Watkins said. “We haven’t been allowed access.”
On Jan. 24, Idaho State Police seized a truck filled with 6,700 pounds of a green, leafy plant material. Anything that tests positive for THC is considered marijuana under Idaho law, even though the 2018 federal farm bill legalized hemp. Hemp contains a miniscule amount of THC but doesn’t have a psychoactive effect.
An ISP investigator believed the truck was full of marijuana. The driver of the truck and owner of the cargo, Big Sky, insisted that the cargo was industrial hemp, and out-of-state tests later confirmed that.
In February, Big Sky filed a federal lawsuit against ISP, Ada County and Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennetts, arguing that hemp is no longer a controlled substance and that Idaho authorities interfered with interstate commerce.
The company also sought a preliminary injunction to get ISP to release the cargo. But a federal judge in Boise denied that request on the grounds that the plaintiffs had not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of the case, because the hemp seized was not produced in accordance with the farm bill, which requires states to have a federally approved regulatory plan for production.
Big Sky appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Bennetts/Ada County filed a motion to dismiss Big Sky’s lawsuit.
In early September, the 9th Circuit ruled that Big Sky must pursue its case in Idaho courts. That decision was cited in an order issued Monday by Ronald E. Bush, chief magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for Idaho.
Bush denied the county’s motion to dismiss Big Sky’s lawsuit.
Much of the rest of this case has been resolved. Idaho State Police returned the semitrailer to the Portland company that owns it, VIP Transporter, Watkins said.
Truck driver Denis V. Palamarchuk, originally charged with felony marijuana trafficking, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor failure to provide supporting documents in driver’s possession. He was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail. He was given credit for five days served, and the rest was suspended. He was granted a withheld judgment and given one year of unsupervised probation.
He was also ordered to pay a $500 fine and $1,860 in restitution.
This story was originally published October 1, 2019 at 1:39 PM.