When Judge Robert Gordon ruled last Tuesday that Shannon O'Brien should be immediately reinstated as chair of the state's Cannabis Control Commission, or CCC, with back pay, he included a closing footnote arguing that any attempt to overturn his ruling would be unlikely to succeed. "As the case at the bar does not present as a close one," Gordon wrote, "the Court does not foresee that the Treasurer is reasonably likely to succeed on the merits of an appeal."
But Massachusetts State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg — who fired O'Brien last year following a yearlong suspension over allegations of gross misconduct that O'Brien has repeatedly and strenuously denied — is trying anyway. On Wednesday, her office filed paperwork seeking to immediately stay the implementation of the judge's ruling as Goldberg appeals it. Goldberg's attorneys argue in her filings that failure to do so would cause "serious disruption to the ongoing work of the Cannabis Control Commission."
The treasurer notes, in her request for a stay, that the judge bluntly wrote he would refuse to issue one if asked; because of this, she's seeking a stay from the Massachusetts Appeals Court instead. Her filing effectively says that Gordon — who referred to Goldberg's rationale for dismissing O'Brien as a "house of cards" in his exceedingly pointed ruling — simply got the case wrong. Goldberg reasserts, for example, that she was justified in removing O'Brien for "gross misconduct," something Gordon explicitly found never actually occurred.
Goldberg's appeal seemed to come as a disappointment to industry leaders who'd viewed Gordon's decision as a chance to impose order on a regulatory body in deep disarray.
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