Salon Allegedly Offers Extra Hospitality – A Pot Cookie – With Its Hospitality Trays
Hospitality food tray skeptics should pay attention to this new California lawsuit. According to a report from CBS Los Angeles, 72-year old Jo Ann Nickerson has filed suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against a San Fernando Valley hair salon after eating a cookie allegedly laced with marijuana. Nickerson alleges that she ate a cookie from a hospitality tray left for patrons. Shortly thereafter, she allegedly developed hallucinations, rapid heartbeat, confusion, disorientation, light-headedness, dizziness, blurred vision, tingling, headaches, and nausea. Blood tests allegedly found THC in Nickerson’s system. The suit asserts claims for negligence, strict product liability, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Not much is known at this time apart from that stated in the pleadings. Nonetheless, we here at Abnormal Use have plenty of questions. For starters, how is Nickerson going to prove that she ingested THC from these hospitality cookies? We are suspicious of gratuitous, unsealed food for a variety of reasons, but the possibility of infused drug cookies has never previously occurred to us. (Of course, we’re in the Carolinas, not California.). Was Nickerson’s cookie the only pot-cookie in the batch? If not, wouldn’t others have reported sharing similar symptoms? If it was the only one, how did it get there? It seems unlikely that a fellow patron would have a pot-cookie in his/her pocket that could easily disguise itself amongst the other cookies already placed upon the hospitality tray. What the pot cookie preserved? Is there a spoliation of evidence issue? It will be interesting to see how this all unravels.
These marijuana suits become even more intriguing now that marijuana is legal either recreationally or medically in several jurisdictions. If marijuana were legal in California for recreational purposes, would this lawsuit have the same punch, if true? Certainly, the effects were unwanted as Nickerson didn’t choose to ingest THC. In fact, she claims to have never smoked marijuana in her 72 years of age. But, do these cases have the potential to morph into something analogous to second hand smoke claims as society becomes more tolerant of marijuana? Or will the long held taboo still affect these cases post-legalization? Today, this thought is nothing more than idle speculation. In the future, who knows?
