A Massachusetts hemp refinery has been sued by an Oregon based CBD company for shipping hemp extract containing dangerously high levels of THC. A suit has been filed against Phasex Corp. by Key Compounds in federal court with criminal charges on account of breach of contract and negligence.
Key Compounds pointed out that Phasex Corp. was supposed to honour an interstate hemp extract oil shipment. But its contents had THC level of 2.5-5% which was touted as 15 times more than the safe level which gets shipped across state lines. This caused the shipment to be seized in January 2019 by the local law enforcement squad of Albany, Oregon.
The seizure was followed by criminal scrutiny of Key Compounds. They were forced to vacate the work premises in Oregon and even cease operations. Its employees were also laid off and they had to liquidate assets for paying the legal charges against felony indictment.
Phasex Corp. had agreed to process industrial hemp oil of Key Compounds on Jan. 18, 2019 for returning the same with industrially acceptable levels of THC. Hans Schonemann, the President of Phasex Corp. has also assured Alexander Reyter, the CEO of Key Compounds that the industrial hemp oil shall be subjected to the CO2 purification process. This is known to bring down the THC content to undetectable levels.
But the purification process went on for too long and thus caused the final sample; F8 to contain THC concentration which was more than 0.3% of the set limit. As per the complaint, “Despite having the test results … Schonemann and Phasex failed to review this information prior to shipping F8 to Key Compounds.”
