A legal showdown reached the U.S. Supreme Court as justices heard the appeal of a New York trucker who claims he was wrongfully fired after testing positive for THC—a compound he says shouldn’t have been in the CBD tincture he took for pain relief.
Douglas Horn, who had relied on the tincture Dixie X after a trucking accident, was dismissed from his job after a drug test flagged THC in his system. Horn insists he never used marijuana and was misled by the product’s labeling, which advertised the absence of the psychoactive ingredient. After losing his long-standing job, Horn sued the manufacturer, Medical Marijuana Inc., under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which targets patterns of criminal enterprise.
Medical Marijuana argued that Horn’s case doesn’t belong under RICO, claiming his dismissal represents a personal injury—better handled under state law—not a business loss. The company warned that letting Horn’s suit proceed could lead to a wave of lawsuits stretching RICO’s original intent.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether expanding RICO claims to include such cases would disrupt the legal landscape. “It would be a radical shift in how personal injury cases are litigated,” he remarked. However, Justice Elena Kagan appeared more sympathetic to Horn’s argument, suggesting that losing a job might indeed qualify as a business injury under the statute’s wording.
Horn and his wife launched their lawsuit back in 2015, alleging that the CBD manufacturer’s misleading practices—combined with violations of the Controlled Substances Act, mail fraud, and wire fraud—cost him his livelihood. An independent lab confirmed that the tincture contained THC, further fueling Horn’s claims.
Though a lower court initially rejected Horn’s RICO claim, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case, prompting Medical Marijuana’s appeal to the Supreme Court. The justices are now tasked with deciding whether Horn’s firing constitutes a business injury under federal law.
A decision on this high-stakes case is expected by June, with its outcome likely to shape future interpretations of RICO and employment-related lawsuits in the U.S.
