Lawyer who claimed pot legal owes clients

A Jacksonville lawyer who insisted his clients could legally grow marijuana, only for them to later face numerous felony charges, must now pay them about $370,000 for his bad legal advice.

Ian Christensen, who lost his law license thanks to what the Florida Supreme Court called his "incompetence and extremely serious harm," told Scott and Marsha Yandell that they could legally use and grow marijuana if it was for a medical purpose, even before the state legalized medical marijuana.

“If a patient can prove to a law enforcement officer that cannabis is the safest medication available to treat their diagnosed condition, they are NOT subject to arrest,” his website said at the time.

Despite his insistence that they had this legal right, the police, the government and a judge disagreed. The Yandells ended up pleading guilty and agreeing to three years’ probation, a $15,000 fine and 100 hours of community service. Marsha Yandell lost her nursing license.

They filed suit against Christensen in 2016. A few weeks ago, a federal judge in Jacksonville ordered Christensen to pay the Yandells $370,000 for wages they lost due to their convictions.

Christensen did not put forward any defense for himself.

“I think this is a case that’s obvious to most people that when you do bad things there are consequences for them,” said Andrew Bonderud, the Yandells’ lawyer in the lawsuit. “When you’re an attorney, you’re held to a higher standard. … Attorneys need to have great care when they’re advising clients.”

In 2015, when the Yandells were arrested, Christensen insisted medical marijuana was legal. He wrote to the Florida Sheriff’s Association telling them his unique and false interpretation of the law, and he opposed efforts to legalize medical marijuana because, he said, it was already legal.

But relevant to the Yandells, he offered clients cards that falsely said they had a right to use cannabis as a medical necessity, long before Florida voted to make medical marijuana legal.

His cards used words like “official legal certification,” and he gave clients a “grow sign” that announced the home was being used to grow medical marijuana.

All this bad legal advice, which he offered to clients across the state, came for the low cost of $800.

“Obviously the challenge at this point is going to be collecting on [the judgment],” Bonderud said. ”… It appears to me that he is not going to voluntarily pay anything, so it will be incumbent upon us to discover assets or discover income sources and to go after them. That’s what we’re going to do for as long as the judgment is valid."

Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310