Trulieve AL, Inc. v. Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, Insa Alabama, LLC, Bragg Canna of Alabama, LLC, and Alabama Always, LLC

Rel: February 6, 2026

Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance sheets of Southern Reporter.
Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Alabama Appellate Courts, 300 Dexter Avenue,
Montgomery, Alabama 36104-3741 ((334) 229-0650), of any typographical or other errors, in order that corrections
may be made before the opinion is published in Southern Reporter.

ALABAMA COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS
OCTOBER TERM, 2025-2026
_________________________

CL-2025-0314
_________________________

Rex Vaughn, Sam Blakemore, Dwight Gamble, Dr. Jimmie
Harvey, James Harwell, Taylor Hatchett, Dr. Eric Jensen, Dr.
Angela Martin, Hon. Charles Price, Dr. William Saliski, Loree
Skelton, Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski, Dr. H. Mac Barnes, and Dion
Robinson, in their official capacities as members of the Alabama
Medical Cannabis Commission, and the Alabama Medical
Cannabis Commission, a State agency

v.

Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, Bragg Canna of Alabama, LLC, Insa
Alabama, LLC, and Alabama Always, LLC
_________________________

CL-2025-0330
_________________________

Ex parte Rex Vaughn, Sam Blakemore, Dwight Gamble, Dr.
Jimmie Harvey, James Harwell, Taylor Hatchett, Dr. Eric
Jensen, Dr. Angela Martin, Hon. Charles Price, Dr. William
CL-2025-0314, CL-2025-0330, and CL-2025-0337

Saliski, Loree Skelton, Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski, Dr. H. Mac Barnes,
and Dion Robinson, in their official capacities as members of
the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission, and the Alabama
Medical Cannabis Commission, a State agency

PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS

(In re: Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, et al.

v.

Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission et al.)
_________________________

CL-2025-0337
_________________________

Trulieve AL, Inc.

v.

Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, Insa Alabama, LLC, Bragg Canna of
Alabama, LLC, and Alabama Always, LLC

Appellate Proceedings from Montgomery Circuit Court
(CV-23-901800)

PER CURIAM.

These consolidated appellate proceedings typify the occasionally

torturous landscape of commercial and regulatory efforts to launch

medical-cannabis licensing and dispensing in Alabama. They each arise

from a civil action originally brought by Jemmstone Alabama, LLC

("Jemmstone"), in the Montgomery Circuit Court ("the circuit court") that

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CL-2025-0314, CL-2025-0330, and CL-2025-0337

has come before this court on three separate occasions concerning other

legal questions. See Ex parte Alabama Med. Cannabis Comm'n, 415 So.

3d 661 (Ala. Civ. App. 2024) ("Jemmstone I"); Ex parte Vaughn, 419 So.

3d 56 (Ala. Civ. App. 2024) ("Jemmstone II"); and Alabama Med.

Cannabis Comm'n v. Jemmstone Alabama, LLC, [Ms. CL-2024-0529,

Apr. 11, 2025] ___ So. 3d ___ (Ala. Civ. App. 2025) ("Jemmstone III"). Our

opinion in Jemmstone I summarizes some of the pertinent factual and

procedural history:

"The [Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission ('the
AMCC')] is the state agency charged with administering the
[Darren] Wesley 'Ato' Hall Compassion Act ('the Act'), Ala.
Code 1975, § 20-2A-1 et seq., which regulates the Alabama
medical-cannabis industry. See Redbud Remedies, LLC v.
Alabama Med. Cannabis Comm'n, 399 So. 3d 1055 (Ala. Civ.
App. 2024). The AMCC is composed of 14 members and
employs an executive director and an assistant director. See
Ala. Code 1975, § 20-2A-20. Among other duties, the AMCC
is responsible for licensing integrated facilities. See Ala. Code
1975, § 20-2A-50 et seq. The decision to grant or to deny an
application for an integrated-facility license is made by a
majority vote of the members of the AMCC present and voting
at a meeting. See § 20-2A-20(h).

"Jemmstone applied to the AMCC for one of five
available integrated-facility licenses. Through a series of
meetings, culminating with a meeting on December 12, 2023,
the AMCC, by the vote of its members, awarded the
integrated-facility licenses to applicants other than
Jemmstone. On December 27, 2023, Jemmstone commenced
a civil action in the circuit court ('the Jemmstone action'),

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pursuant to Ala. Code 1975, § 41-22-10, a part of the Alabama
Administrative Procedure Act ('the AAPA'), Ala. Code 1975,
§ 41-22-1 et seq., requesting a judgment declaring that the
integrated-facility-licensing decisions made by the AMCC
through its members were void and requesting an injunction
to prevent any action to enforce those licensing decisions; that
civil action was assigned case number CV-23-901800.

"In the caption of the complaint filed in the Jemmstone
action, Jemmstone named the AMCC as the sole defendant.
In the body of the complaint, however, Jemmstone indicated
that it was also suing the individual members of the AMCC in
their official capacities and identified each member by name
and instructed the circuit-court clerk to serve the AMCC's
members. The summons provided that the AMCC's members
could be served by certified mail addressed to the office of the
AMCC's executive director. See Ala. Code 1975, § 20-2A-20(l).

"On December 29, 2023, the circuit court granted
Jemmstone's motion to consolidate the Jemmstone action
with case number CV-23-231; the circuit court had previously
designated case number CV-23-231 to be the 'master case' for
administering the mass litigation arising out of the AMCC's
integrated-facility-licensing process. On January 3, 2024, the
circuit court entered a temporary restraining order in the
master case ('the TRO'), stating as a preamble to the order
that '[t]his [d]ocument [a]lso [r]elates to ... [the Jemmstone
action].' The TRO purports to enjoin the AMCC and its
members from 'taking any action in furtherance of December
12, 2023[,] awards of licenses in the Integrated Facility license
category, including without limitation the issuance of any
licenses.'

"On March 6, 2024, the AMCC and the AMCC's
members filed a motion to dismiss the master case and the
Jemmstone action. The AMCC and the AMCC's members
argued that the master case should be dismissed as a void
proceeding because the circuit court lacked subject-matter

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CL-2025-0314, CL-2025-0330, and CL-2025-0337

jurisdiction over a civil action commenced against only the
AMCC, which, they argued, was immune from suit due to
State or sovereign immunity. See Art. I, § 14, Ala. Const. 2022
(' … [T]he State of Alabama shall never be made a defendant
in any court of law or equity.'). As to the Jemmstone action,
the AMCC and the AMCC's members asserted that [that] civil
action was also a void proceeding due to the doctrine of State
or sovereign immunity, contending that the AMCC was the
only named defendant in the Jemmstone action because
Jemmstone had not included the names of the AMCC's
members in the caption of the complaint as required by Rule
10(a), Ala. R. Civ. P.

"In the motion to dismiss, the AMCC and the AMCC's
members also moved the circuit court to vacate the TRO. The
AMCC and the AMCC's members primarily argued that the
TRO was invalid because it was entered in void proceedings,
i.e., the master case and the Jemmstone action. Alternatively,
the AMCC and the AMCC's members contended that, even if
the Jemmstone action was not a void proceeding, the TRO had
not been entered in that case pursuant to Rule 58(c), Ala. R.
Civ. P.

"On May 16, 2024, the circuit court denied the motion to
dismiss. In its order denying the motion to dismiss, the circuit
court determined that Jemmstone had properly named the
members of the AMCC as co-defendants in the body of the
complaint filed in the Jemmstone action, thereby invoking the
subject-matter jurisdiction of the circuit court. The circuit
court also concluded that the TRO had been entered in the
Jemmstone action so that it was effective, thereby denying the
motion to vacate that order."

415 So. 3d at 664-66 (footnotes omitted). In this opinion, we use the same

defined terms and designations we used in this excerpt from Jemmstone

I.

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This court determined that the AMCC had been improperly named

as a defendant and ordered the circuit court to dismiss it as a defendant

(Jemmstone I, 415 So. 3d at 671) and that the TRO that had been entered

against the AMCC was void as contrary to the sovereign-immunity

doctrine (Jemmstone III, ___ So. 3d at ___); however, this court

determined that the Jemmstone action had also named the AMCC's

members as defendants despite their omission from the caption of the

complaint and that the members' insufficiency-of-service-of-process

contentions had been waived (Jemmstone II, 419 So. 3d at 63-64).

Two of the claims asserted in the body of the first amended

complaint in the Jemmstone action (Count Four and the first of two

counts identified as "Count Six"), which was filed in the circuit court on

March 7, 2024, took issue with the AMCC's adoption of a temporary rule

and a permanent rule setting forth "special procedures" to "apply to all

license applications that were the subject of" administrative stays on the

part of the AMCC or temporary restraining orders entered by the circuit

court in August and September 2023 and that were or became "subject to

an award of licens[ure] by [the AMCC]" thereafter. See Ala. Admin. Code

(Medical Cannabis Comm'n.) rr. 538-X-3-.20ER ("the emergency rule") &

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538-X-3-.20 ("the permanent rule"). The issue of the validity of the

emergency rule was raised in a separate civil action involving another

unsuccessful integrated-facility-license applicant, Alabama Always, LLC

(Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission v. Alabama Always, LLC, [Ms.

CL-2024-0588, Mar. 7, 2025] ___ So. 3d ___, ___ n.2 (Ala. Civ. App.)

("Alabama Always"), cert. denied (Nos. SC-2025-0327 and SC-2025-0330,

Dec. 12, 2025)), but was made salient in the Jemmstone action by virtue

of a motion filed on October 8, 2024, four days after the issuance of this

court's opinion in Jemmstone I, by Jemmstone and two other plaintiffs

that had joined the Jemmstone action for the first time in the first

amended complaint (Insa Alabama, LLC ("Insa"), and Bragg Canna of

Alabama, LLC ("Bragg")); that motion sought the entry of a partial

summary judgment as to the issue of the rules' validity (among other

issues).1 On April 3, 2025, after the circuit court had scheduled a hearing

on the motion, AMCC and its members and Trulieve AL, Inc. ("Trulieve"),

filed responses in opposition to the partial-summary-judgment motion,

asserting, among other things, that they were entitled to a summary

1Although Alabama Always, LLC, was also listed as a plaintiff in

the first amended complaint in the Jemmstone action, that entity did not
join in the October 8, 2024, partial-summary-judgment motion.
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CL-2025-0314, CL-2025-0330, and CL-2025-0337

judgment in their favor; AMCC and its members also filed a new motion

on that date seeking dismissal of the claims asserted by Jemmstone, Insa,

Bragg, and Alabama Always, LLC ("Alabama Always"), in the first

amended complaint.

After an April 15, 2025, hearing on pending motions, the circuit

court entered an order on April 21, 2025, declaring that the emergency

rule was void and permanently enjoining AMCC's members from taking

any action as to the AMCC's December 12, 2023, integrated-facility-

licensing determinations, but stating that other claims in the Jemmstone

action would remain pending. The AMCC and its members, as well as

Trulieve, appealed from that injunctive order (see generally Rule

4(a)(1)(A), Ala. R. App. P., regarding the immediate right of appeal from

interlocutory injunctive orders), and that order was stayed by this court

pending review of the circuit court's decision. Further, the AMCC and

its members timely petitioned for the issuance of a writ of mandamus

directing the circuit court to grant their April 3, 2025, motion to dismiss.

Those appeals and the mandamus petition were later consolidated for

purposes of briefing and decision, and, because of our conclusion that the

mandamus petition is due to be granted in light of several of our previous

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holdings involving subject-matter-jurisdiction questions as to civil

actions against the AMCC and its members arising from the realm of

medical-cannabis licensing, we dismiss the appeals as having been taken

from void judgments.

As Jemmstone I indicates, the Jemmstone action originally sought

a judgment declaring that the integrated-facility-licensing decisions

made by the AMCC's members were void and enjoining any action to

enforce those licensing decisions. As ultimately amended, the complaint

in the Jemmstone action asserts several discrete types of substantive

claims, including (a) claims against the AMCC and its members, along

with the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries ("the

Department") and the Department's director, concerning the awarding

and issuance of integrated-facility and cultivator licenses without

sufficient input from the Department (Counts One through Three); (b)

claims that the permanent rule and the emergency rule, respectively, are

invalid (Count Four and the first count labeled "Count Six"); and (c)

claims that the AMCC's actions as to preaward scoring of applicants and

intent to hold postaward investigative hearings are improper (Count Five

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and the second count labeled "Count Six"). 2 The circuit court's partial

summary judgment in favor of Jemmstone and the other plaintiffs and

the permanent injunctive relief address only claims within the second of

these types, but that judgment, in effect, represents a refusal to grant the

motion to dismiss filed by the AMCC and its members directed to the

entirety of the action.

In their mandamus petition, the AMCC and its members suggest

that dismissal of all claims in the Jemmstone action is compelled by this

court's decisions in Southeast Cannabis Co. v. Alabama Medical

Cannabis Commission, [Ms. CL-2024-0300, Dec. 20, 2024] ___ So. 3d ___

(Ala. Civ. App. 2024) ("Southeast"), cert. denied sub nom.; Ex parte

TheraTrue Alabama, LLC, [Ms. SC-2025-0006, Oct. 31, 2025] ____ So. 3d

___ (Ala. 2025); Alabama Always, supra; and Alabama Medical Cannabis

Commission v. TheraTrue Alabama, LLC, [Ms. CL-2024-0582, Mar. 21,

2025] ___ So. 3d ___ (Ala. Civ. App. 2025) ("TheraTrue"). A review of

those cases indicates that the position of the AMCC and its members is

sound.

2Counts Seven and Eight in the Jemmstone action simply seek
injunctive relief as a remedy with respect to the plaintiffs' substantive
claims.
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In Southeast, this court noted that the AMCC, after having made

an initial solicitation for applications as to all classifications of medical-

cannabis licensure, approved in June 2023 license applications submitted

by, among others, integrated-facility applicants Southeast Cannabis

Company and TheraTrue Alabama, LLC, and dispensary applicant

Yellowhammer Medical Dispensaries, LLC; however, in August 2023, the

AMCC voted to "void" those approvals, but thereafter it acted to again

approve those three applicants. After the circuit court had issued a

temporary restraining order barring the AMCC from taking any further

action on the August 2023 approvals, the AMCC stayed the issuance of

licenses to the three chosen applicants and, after adoption of the

emergency rule, rescinded those later approvals and restarted the

application-review process, ultimately leading to new decisions on the

part of the AMCC in December 2023 not to approve the three applicants

for licensure. In reviewing a summary judgment subsequently entered

in favor of the AMCC and its members on the three applicants' civil

actions brought under the ostensible authority of the AAPA, seeking to

challenge the rescission of approval of the three applicants for licensure,

this court framed the key issue in Southeast as whether "the AMCC had

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the authority to rescind the licenses that it had awarded" (___ So. 3d at

___). This court concluded in Southeast that the AMCC indeed had the

"inherent authority" to rescind its August 2023 decisions to approve the

three applicants (which rescission, we held, did not constitute revocation

of an issued license) and that the applicants did not have standing under

the AAPA to seek a judgment declaring that the AMCC did not properly

adopt administrative rules allowing it to exercise discretion to stay

issuance of particular medical-cannabis licenses (___ So. 3d at ___-___).

In Alabama Always, this court considered the propriety of an

interlocutory order of the circuit court determining that an integrated-

facility applicant, who had been denied approval by the AMCC at all

three decision points in June 2023, August 2023, and December 2023,

had a reasonable chance of success on its claims that the AMCC had

failed to comply with its applicant-scoring rules and that AMCC's

investigative-hearing process to determine whether to award medical-

cannabis licenses to previously approved applicants or to previously

denied applicants were in violation of the AAPA. This court concluded

that the circuit court had lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to enter that

interlocutory order. As to the claim that the AMCC had failed to follow

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its applicant-scoring rules, we noted that such claims could properly be

brought only in an appeal from a final licensing decision and concluded

that the AMCC's December 2023 application approvals were not final

decisions given the decision of the AMCC not to actually issue any

licenses, i.e., to stay the issuance of any integrated-facility licenses

notwithstanding having approved applicants other than the aggrieved

applicant. See Alabama Always, ___ So. 3d at ___-___. As to the claim

that the AMCC did not sufficiently specify the parameters of an

investigative hearing afforded to applicants that are not approved, this

court concluded that the aggrieved applicant's dispute was not ripe for

judicial determination -- "[u]nless and until the AMCC and the

commissioners are allowed to proceed, it remains speculative as to

whether … they will impair or threaten to impair the procedural right of

[the aggrieved applicant] to a contested-case hearing." Id. at ___.

In TheraTrue, applicants for integrated-facility and dispensary

licenses initiated actions, ostensibly under the AAPA, against the AMCC

in the circuit court, seeking both review of the decisions of the AMCC not

to approve their applications and awards of declaratory and injunctive

relief; the plaintiffs in that case asserted that the AMCC had failed to

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comply with administrative regulations governing scoring of medical-

cannabis applications. In reviewing an award of a preliminary injunction

against the AMCC, this court observed that "[a] party may not maintain

a civil action for declaratory and injunctive relief against the AMCC, even

pursuant to § 41-22-10," Ala. Code 1975, the portion of the AAPA upon

which Jemmstone and the other plaintiffs in this case had relied (___ So.

3d at ___). We also noted, citing Alabama Always, that no final,

appealable decisions had been made by the AMCC as to who would

receive integrated-facility and dispensary licenses and opined that "the

circuit court can remedy any errors the AMCC may have committed in

failing to comply with its internal licensing rules." ___ So. 3d at ___. We

therefore directed the circuit court to dismiss the appeals brought by the

applicants in TheraTrue challenging the AMCC's December 2023

licensure approvals. ___ So. 3d at ___.

In these appellate proceedings, the claims asserted in the circuit

court by Jemmstone, Insa, Bragg, and Alabama Always in the first

amended complaint generally posit that (a) the AMCC and its members

unlawfully awarded cultivator and integrated-facility licenses in the

absence of statutorily required participation of the Department (Counts

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One, Two, and Three); 3 (b) the AMCC and its members did not comply

with the AAPA in adopting the emergency rule and the permanent rule;

and (c) the AMCC and its members did not, in making the most recent

licensing awards in December 2023, comply with regulations governing

scoring and did not implement a valid investigative-hearing process with

respect to administrative review as to those awards. However, the circuit

court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction at this time to adjudicate any of

those claims. As to the first and third sets of claims, our opinions in

Alabama Always and TheraTrue make clear that the AMCC's December

2023 licensure decisions are purely interlocutory in nature and that the

plaintiffs' challenges thereto in the Jemmstone action are not ripe for

adjudication. Regarding the claims that the AMCC and its members

failed to comply with the AAPA in adopting the emergency rule and the

permanent rule, the portion of the AAPA authorizing declaratory-

judgment actions (Ala. Code 1975, § 41-22-10) expressly conditions a

3Although the Act as originally adopted in 2021 did contain
provisions envisioning participation by the Department in decisions
involving cultivator and integrated-facility licensure applications, those
provisions were deleted in amendments to the Act adopted by the
legislature in 2024. Compare Ala. Acts 2021, Act No. 2021-450, with Ala.
Acts 2024, Act No. 2024-342.
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circuit court's jurisdiction upon actual or threatened "interfere[nce] with

or impair[ment of] … the legal rights or privileges of the plaintiff," as this

court noted in Alabama Always; here, any legal infirmity of the

preliminary-presentation rules that the circuit court purported to strike

down would in no way impair the plaintiffs' rights to demonstrate their

claimed entitlement to ultimate issuance of licenses by the AMCC via the

investigative-hearing mechanism, see Southeast (declining to find that

particular applicants had standing to assert a claim under § 41-22-10

when application of administrative rule did not impair whatever legal

rights and privileges applicants possessed).

Based upon the foregoing facts and authorities, we conclude that

the circuit court acted outside its discretion in not granting the motion to

dismiss filed by the AMCC and its members based upon its lack of

subject-matter jurisdiction over the Jemmstone action. Because no such

subject-matter jurisdiction existed, the circuit court's April 21, 2025,

injunctive order in the Jemmstone action was necessarily void and will

not support an appeal. Accordingly, we dismiss case nos. CL-2025-0314

and CL-2025-0337, i.e., the appeals taken by the AMCC and its members

and by Trulieve, and we grant the petition for the writ of mandamus filed

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by the AMCC and its members in case no. CL-2025-0330; the circuit court

is directed to dismiss the Jemmstone action without prejudice to judicial

review that may lie pursuant to the AAPA with respect to a final

administrative determination regarding which applicants the AMCC

deems entitled to be issued medical-cannabis licenses following the

holding of investigative hearings as envisioned by the Act.

CL-2025-0314 -- APPEAL DISMISSED.

CL-2025-0330 -- PETITION GRANTED; WRIT ISSUED.

CL-2025-0337 -- APPEAL DISMISSED.

All the judges concur.

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