A cannabis testing lab’s lawsuit claiming its rivals manipulated their testing to show inflated THC levels and fewer contaminants like mold or pesticides can move forward, a Massachusetts judge ruled.
Bloomberg
A cannabis testing lab’s lawsuit claiming its rivals manipulated their testing to show inflated THC levels and fewer contaminants like mold or pesticides can move forward, a Massachusetts judge ruled.
The allegations detailed by cannabis testing company MCR Labs of widespread “cheating on state regulated laboratory tests to increase market share” could potentially constitute an unfair trade practice, Judge Debra Squires-Lee of the Suffolk County Superior Court said in a Tuesday order allowing much of the case to advance.
Eight of MCR’s competitors allegedly boosted the potency results of cannabis samples sent in and manipulated …
A Massachusetts judge ruled Tuesday that MCR Labs’ lawsuit against eight competing cannabis testing facilities can move forward on unfair competition claims, finding that allegations of systematically inflated THC results and ignored contamination failures could constitute unfair trade practices, though the judge dismissed unjust enrichment and tortious interference claims. MCR claims competitors boosted THC potency by up to 46% when cultivators switched labs and passed samples for yeast and mold that should have failed, with one defendant lab reporting just 0.05% failure rates compared to the state average of 4.5%. The Cannabis Control Commission shut down Assured Testing Laboratories in July after finding the lab processed 25% of all state yeast and mold tests but failed only 10 out of 17,565 samples over a year, and MCR’s data shows cultivators engaging in systematic lab shopping where they test with multiple facilities to find the most favorable results. Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Debra Squires-Lee’s Tuesday ruling keeps the core testing fraud allegations alive while narrowing MCR’s legal theories, validating that systematic result manipulation can constitute unfair competition and opening the door for similar suits in other markets. Testing integrity is the one thing that separates legal cannabis markets from illicit ones, and Massachusetts built a compliance system where economic incentives reward fraud because cultivators face competitive pressure to find labs that will inflate their THC numbers while honest testing facilities lose business to competitors willing to compromise results. (Bloomberg Law, Boston Globe, Law360)
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