The courtroom battle over who gets to sell cannabis in Menominee, Michigan - a Lake Michigan border town with more active lawsuits per marijuana license than perhaps any municipality in the state - is finally thinning out. But it is not over, and the most consequential fight may now be playing out two hundred miles south in Oakland County, where the conflict has taken a harder edge: corporate sabotage allegations, a covert ballot committee, and falsified campaign finance disclosures.
A Waiver, a Dismissal, and a Defiant Promise to Appeal
On April 22, Menominee Circuit Court Judge Mary Barglind dismissed Puff Cannabis's claims against the city on a threshold procedural point: Puff had signed a legal waiver as part of its licensing application, forfeiting its right to sue. Nine pages. Clean ruling. Councilman Michael DeDamos, the only city official willing to comment publicly, was characteristically blunt: "We'll just win on appeals too."
Puff's attorney, Jennifer Green, was equally direct in the other direction. An appeal is coming. The form isn't settled yet, but the intent is firm. What's striking here is that the dismissal didn't actually resolve much - the judge's order left intact a court-imposed ban on new marijuana licenses, and made no ruling on claims filed by the other cannabis companies also caught in Menominee's licensing gridlock. One license remains available. At least five companies want it. The underlying tension hasn't moved.
Menominee's predicament was, to be fair, genuinely awkward: the city had made licensing commitments in 2023 to settle earlier lawsuits, then voters in November capped the total number of cannabis businesses at nine. Honoring one obligation meant breaking the other. That kind of structural trap rarely resolves cleanly, and it hasn't.
The Lume Lawsuit: Where the Real Accusations Live
A day before Barglind's ruling, Puff filed a 38-page complaint in Oakland County Circuit Court against Lume Cannabis, the Troy-based company that operates Michigan's largest marijuana retail chain, including a store in Menominee. The timing was not accidental.
The complaint is pointed. Puff accuses Lume of bankrolling a "sham ballot committee" - the group called Defending Menominee - to push the November ballot initiative that capped licenses and effectively froze Puff out of the market. The motive, per the lawsuit, was elemental: Lume didn't want another competitor, particularly one that had already received conditional approval, purchased real estate in Menominee, and spent nearly $2 million preparing to open a store.
The connections alleged are specific. Kevin Blair, an attorney who represents Lume, also represented Defending Menominee. Defending Menominee's public campaign finance filings list a Lansing law firm employee as treasurer - a firm whose representative told MLive only that he was "not at liberty" to identify the client. The ballot committee listed Grassroots Midwest, a consulting firm, as its source of funds; neither Lume, Blair, Defending Menominee, nor the consulting firm has responded to questions about Lume's possible involvement.
Puff's core allegation on campaign finance is that Defending Menominee's filings concealed Lume's actual role, in violation of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act. As of early April, the state Attorney General's Office said no open investigations existed related to Menominee's marijuana market. Menominee County Prosecutor Jeffrey T. Rogg has not responded to MLive's request for comment.
Structural Corruption, or Just Messy Small-Town Politics?
The broader context here is worth sitting with. The 2023 settlement that uncapped marijuana licenses in Menominee also gave certain companies a quiet form of leverage: in exchange for licensing guarantees, those businesses agreed to indemnify the city - meaning they would cover the city's legal bills for future lawsuits. National Civic League President Doug Linkhart, commenting on the arrangement to MLive earlier this year, called it a potential "can of worms for potential corruption and influence." That's a restrained way of putting it. When private companies pay the legal bills of a municipality against which other private companies are suing, the conflict of interest isn't merely theoretical.
Two Menominee council members were previously reported to have connections - personal or through relatives - to marijuana real estate transactions. A recall effort against one of them failed to collect enough signatures. The Attorney General's Office confirmed it received two investigation requests last year from a single council member, referring at least one complaint about alleged "corruption and conspiracy" to the county prosecutor. That prosecutor says he's received nothing.
Green put it plainly: "All of the shenanigans up there are just so beyond the pale of what happens in normal business." The Menominee lawsuit would have enabled subpoenas and depositions that might have surfaced communications and decisions made outside public view. Barglind's dismissal closed that door. Puff now hopes Oakland County opens another.
What Comes Next - and Why It Matters Beyond Menominee
The Menominee situation is, on one level, a hyperlocal story about a handful of cannabis companies fighting over a single remaining retail license in a small Upper Peninsula border town. On another level, it's a case study in the regulatory and political vulnerabilities that still define Michigan's legal marijuana market several years into legalization.
Ballot initiatives, local licensing caps, indemnification arrangements, and the consolidation of a few well-funded retail chains have reshaped competitive access to the cannabis market in ways the 2018 legalization vote didn't anticipate. Smaller operators who cleared the state licensing process, invested capital, and played by the rules are finding that local politics - and allegedly, local money - can close a door that state regulators opened.
The Oakland County lawsuit will test whether Michigan courts are willing to scrutinize ballot committee financing in the cannabis sector with the same rigor applied elsewhere in campaign finance law. That's the question with teeth. A dismissal in Menominee is one thing. What emerges through discovery in Oakland County is another matter entirely.
