Here is the link to the PDF announcement from the Illinois Department of Agriculture. The Illinois Department of Agriculture has suspended the deadline for issuing Illinois’s new Adult Use Cannabis Craft Grower, Cannabis Infuser and Cannabis Transporter licenses on account of the COVID-19 epidemic. Here’s the text from the announcement in case you can’t download it: SPRINGFIELD, IL – The Illinois Department of Agriculture announced today the July 1st deadline for issuing adult-use cannabis…

A dispute over a contracted alcoholic beverage between the parties to this alcoholic beverage manufacturing agreement arose after the purchaser, a company that markets, sells, and distributes alcoholic beverages, raised quality control issues with the manufacturer, a brewery, distillery, and winery producing the purchaser’s “chocolate and cream based wine blends” and a “cream and coffee based alcohol blend.” The complaint alleges that the manufacturer produced 3,126 cases of the purchasers iced coffee and at an…

An appeal of a ruling in favor of a distiller against a consumer claiming an antiquated state food purity law trumped the TTB’s acceptance of FDA generally recognized as safe (GRAS) regulations may provide some much needed guidance for brewers, distillers, and vintners worried about state laws and standards regarding the production of beer, spirits and wine that prohibit activities allowed by Federal law or regulation. The appeal involves a recent preemption win that Bacardi…

We’d previously written about this case when the complaint was filed challenging the failure to award some of Illinois’s still unawarded medical cannabis dispensary licenses and discussed what the implications were given that medical cannabis dispensaries are allowed to sell recreational cannabis from their current dispensaries and granted an additional license to open a second adult use recreational cannabis facility in Illinois under illinois’s Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act. Back when the initial licensing round…

Last week we wrote about the updated criteria for forgiveness of the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Act implemented by the update to that program – the PPP Flexibility Act. The SBA has now released the newly updated forms for obtaining forgiveness – the loan forgiveness application and the new Form EZ loan forgiveness application. Each of these forms include the updates incorporated by the PPP Flexibility Act. The new EZ Form applies for borrowers…

It was bound to happen. And I’m happy it was in Chicago, Illinois, that a restaurant and bar fought and received an equitable reduction in rent proportionate to the potential loss in revenue (more on this below) suffered by the restaurant under the COVID-19 stay at home and business closure orders issued by the State of Illinois. The restaurant/bar had filed for bankruptcy protection before the COVID-19 crisis, so the order and opinion come from…

The Small Business Administration (“SBA”) has issued two Interim Final Rules amending the Interim Final Rule they’d issued back in April. These new rules implement changes to the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) made by the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act. The first update can be found here. The second update can be found here. The first update effectuates the following changes for PPP loans (old and new): Extends the covered period for the…