Colorado marijuana testing facility CannLabs closed its Denver laboratory on Tuesday and laid off as many as 15 employees.
The shutdown of one of the largest labs in Colorado, and one considered an industry leader, comes after months of controversy involving the company’s leadership.
“It’s positive for us,” CannLabs Inc. CEO Mark Mirken told The Denver Post on Tuesday, “There were a significant amount of issues surrounding our involvement with CannLabs Colorado, items that were made public by certain people within that company that were factually incorrect and clearly became an impediment to our ability to work with them under the administrative services agreement.”
CannLabs Inc. on Tuesday technology license agreement with CannLabs Colorado, which holds a state lab license.
CannLabs Inc. owns the lab’s intellectual property, laboratory licenses in Connecticut and Nevada, a consulting business and StrainData database, Mirken said. CannLabs Colorado still owns the Colorado license for a marijuana testing facility.
Genifer Murray, founder and former CEO of CannLabs talks about the testing of marijuana during an interview at her Denver lab in January 2013. (Ed Andrieski, Associated Press file)
But Mirken said CannLabs Inc. is trying to acquire another licensed Colorado lab or partner with it.
“The most advantageous opportunity for us would be to acquire another company’s license in some sort of an agreeable configuration where the benefits of each company were synergistic,” Mirken said.
, and for pesticides and other chemical residues, and biological contamination. Its clients are typically cannabis growers and retailers.
The company’s StrainData.com website helps consumers make product selections based on cannabinoid profiles.
CannLabs Inc. spokesman Bill Livermore said the company hopes to transition quickly — and ideally bring back some of the laid-off staff.
“The company hopes that through the acquisition of a new license and lab that key staff members will be able to rejoin us,” he said.
with motorsports company SpeedSport Branding to become a publicly traded company. At the time of the merger, shares in the company traded at about $1.38, hitting a high of $2.22 a few weeks later. On Wednesday, shares were trading over the counter at 43 cents.
According to SEC filings, CannLabs Inc. was terminated in early September for disclosing confidential information to third parties, advancing her personal interests over those of the company and making “defamatory statements about current and former executive officers, directors and shareholders of the Company, exposing the Company to potential litigation by such parties.”
In her resignation letter, written two weeks later, Murray advised Mirken and the company’s board of directors, “The way you have conducted yourselves in terms of noncompliance and outrageous expenditures as Directors of the company has seriously damaged the company and its shareholders.
“In hindsight, I realized that this merger … was a result of very bad advice and was detrimental to the work I have been devoted to for the past five and a half years,” Murray wrote.
She also said she is owed more than $100,000 by the company in backpay, bonuses and expenses.
Murray did not respond to messages left Tuesday and Wednesday.
Mirken declined to respond to Murray’s claims.
“Sometimes in new industries, where you try to combine the business practices of a traditional non-regulated environment with probably one of the most heavily regulated environments, which would be, as far as labs are concerned, the CDPHE (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment) and MED (Marijuana Enforcement Division), and you layer on top of that the requirements of a publicly held entity, sometimes it’s difficult for people to both understand the rigorous rules that are required and the compliance issues that must be faced in being a public company,” Mirken said. “It’s possible that in this situation that became a difficult hurdle.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394, rbaca@denverpost.com or @bruvs
