By, Angela Stelmakowich on TheGrowthOp
Nothing has been announced about the specific terms reached, but the 84-year-old Edmonton native Tommy Chong and his son have reportedly settled with a licensing company that was suing the duo.
According to City News Service, Evergreen Licensing LLC and its founder had launched the suit against Chong, his son Paris and a business associate.
The suit filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit reportedly claimed the father and son had cut the plaintiffs out of profits from a marketing plan related to the sale of weed products and accessories.
As of late last week, a superior court judge reportedly vacated the trial date set to kick off on Oct. 11 in line with court papers filed by the plaintiffs in late August.
A company named Evergreen Licensing notes on its website that it “offers a portfolio of licensed and branded products focused by retail channel and product category,” and adds the company’s licensing strategy “provides a portfolio of trusted household brands extended into new retail channels and categories.”
Licensing company was seeking unspecified damages
CBS Los Angeles reported in 2018, when the lawsuit was filed, that Evergreen Licensing was seeking unspecified damages for breach of contract, fraud and unjust enrichment (in essence, meaning the defendants were enriched at Evergreen Licensing’s expense without any good legal reason).
Despite pumping three years and US$1 million of cash into the joint venture, it was claimed Chong, his son and a business associate schemed to “take it all away, even hacking into Evergreen’s Gmail account in order to misappropriate social media sites that plaintiffs created for the project.”
City News Service reports that in a countersuit, Chong alleged Evergreen Licensing did not provide quarterly statements, pay US$130,000 in royalty fees or receive written approval for Tommy Chong’s intellectual property rights.
Chong well-known for cannabis advocacy
The funnyman is well-known for cannabis advocacy and was honoured this past spring with the Lifetime Achievement Award during the O’Cannabiz conference.
“There are few celebrities in the cannabis world that would be more deserving of recognition than Tommy Chong,” Neill Dixon, president of O’Cannabiz, said in a statement. “Through his body of work and through his activism, he has done so much to bring awareness and mainstream acceptability of cannabis. As fellow Canadians, we have much to be thankful for,” Dixon noted at the time.
Activist has partnered on weed products
But Chong is not above mixing advocacy with commerce, having marketed cannabis-related items in the past. In 2014, he launched Tommy Chong’s Smoke Swipe in collaboration with Reviver Clothing Swipes.
Touted as a “breakthrough product designed to swipe away the smell of cannabis and tobacco odour on clothing,” the swipes sought to help keep usage discreet.
“While our culture is rapidly accepting cannabis consumption as a way of life, it’s fair to acknowledge that smelling like cannabis in many public settings may not be cool,” the Grammy Award-winning comedian and activist noted in a press release. “I could have used my Tommy Chong’s Smoke Swipe 10 years ago to save me from a lot of headaches,” he joked.
In May 2022, Nature’s Medicines announced it was launching two new, exclusive product lines from Cheech Marin & Tommy Chong at locations in Arizona and New Mexico. The products are available in eighths of prepacked flower, one-gram pre-rolled joints, concentrates, vape cartridges and edibles.
Going solo, the recreational weed brand, Tommy’s Craft Cannabis, was released in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario dispensaries in October of 2021, according to theYYScene.
The Tommy Chong’s Cannabis website also lists CBD and cannabis products.
In 2019, Chong told Yahoo! Finance he believed CBD was a “medicine that prevents you from getting sick as well as helping with ailments that you already have… Marijuana’s been a medicine for thousands of years and we’re just finding that out, now. And it’s going to get bigger, by the way.”
The recent lawsuit, though, was not the only time Chong found himself in hot water over weed. In 2004, various media outlets reported, he want to jail for nine months for selling drug paraphernalia, that is, bongs.
The Guardian reported he was arrested after a sting operation in which U.S. federal agents ordered bongs over the internet, thereby ensuring the items were sent across state lines.
H/T: TheGrowthOp
