A Blank Rome team prevailed in a derivative action originally filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court in March 2023, recovering a judgment in the amount of $8,754,730 (including attorneys’ fees) against Robert Selan and his company, Onion Plant LLC. Blank Rome’s clients, a group of a dozen investors in Onion Plant LLC, alleged that Mr. Selan breached his fiduciary duties by failing to take necessary steps to develop the cannabis-centered business campus in which they had invested. The matter was intensely litigated for several years, and was written about in industry trade publications. The case ended on the eve of trial, after the Court issued terminating sanctions against the defendants for their failure to comply with several discovery orders. A separate matter remains pending, in which one of the investors alleges that Mr. Selan and Onion Plant LLC defrauded it into spending $6,500,000 to develop an indoor cannabis growing facility on the campus. That case is set for trial in September 2025.
The Blank Rome team was led by Jonathan A. Loeb and Jeffrey Rosenfeld.
