With 3,000-plus pages of confidential documents and depositions now public, here’s what both sides are claiming ahead of a final hearing
Talking Joints Memo is publishing multiple articles about the newly public documents from legal proceedings involving former Cannabis Control Commission Chair Shannon O’Brien and Massachusetts Treasurer Deb Goldberg. Check talkingjointsmemo.com for updates and be sure to sign up for our email list for bonus news and analysis before it appears on our site.
Going back to fall of 2023 when she was first suspended from her chair seat at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission for (what were still at the time) unspecified offenses, Shannon O’Brien claimed the backstory and details of her time at the agency would contradict allegations against her.
From O’Brien’s suspension on through her subsequent firing in September 2024, the former state rep, senator, and treasurer (who was appointed to the CCC by current state Treasurer Deb Goldberg two years earlier) said, sometimes through her lawyers, that confidential documents and information would at least add context around claims that she behaved in ways that warranted removal.
In early June, a Suffolk County Superior Court justice granted that wish, denying Goldberg, CCC employees, appointees, and the agency itself their requests to have some names anonymized and information kept secret. The decision read in part: “The Court concludes that the Treasurer, the CCC, and the CCC Intervenors have not demonstrated the good cause necessary to justify either impoundment or further redaction of the Administrative Record. The countervailing interests of both O’Brien and the broader public in unrestricted access to the documentary evidence bearing on this government agency’s dismissal of its Chairperson overwhelmingly tip the scale, and must be respected.”
Final motions filed in O’Brien v. Goldberg
Last week, O’Brien’s legal team released the liberated documents in seven files totaling in excess of 3,000 pages. Ahead of that drop, in anticipation of the bombshell, they also filed their final petition with the court on June 5, arguing that “O’Brien contends that she was not given a meaningful opportunity to be heard, that her hearing did not comport with constitutional or statutory due process requirements, and that Goldberg’s Decision is not supported by substantial evidence.”
More specifically, the former CCC chair’s lawyers wrote: “The case against O’Brien was based on the complaints of two persons, each of whom held grudges against O’Brien. … One complainant—who accused O’Brien of … ‘bullying’ him—was Shawn Collins, a long-time friend and assistant to the Treasurer who was installed as the first Executive Director of the CCC at the Treasurer’s request.
“The other complainant was now-former commissioner Nurys Camargo, who had been an unsuccessful applicant for the Chair position before it was offered to O’Brien, believed that the Chair position rightfully belonged to her and filed a complaint against O’Brien that she made racially insensitive comments.”
“For all the foregoing reasons,” her lawyers contended, “O’Brien is entitled requests that the Court vacate the Treasurer’s baseless, unsupported, and unauthorized Decision; order her reinstatement as Chair and Commissioner of the CCC; award her back pay and her attorneys’ fees; and grant such further and other relief as is just.”
On July 10, Goldberg and her counsel, Mass Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, filed their opposition to O’Brien’s motion for judgment. Among other things, they argued that the “Treasurer thus fully complied with the procedural requirements,” and that “O’Brien relies on self-serving allegations of a vast conspiracy between the Treasurer, a former Deputy Treasurer, and a former employee of the Treasurer who had last worked for the Treasurer more than six years before O’Brien’s suspension as the factual bases for her contention that the Treasurer was partial and should have recused herself.”
Thousands of pages of documents released
With the release of the aforementioned materials last week, the ousted chair’s attorneys wrote in a media release: “Ms. O’Brien has consistently maintained that sunlight is the best disinfectant. She hopes that now that the public can finally access the materials involved in her Removal Hearing, the public can see the secret, one-sided process that Treasurer Goldberg utilized to remove Ms. O’Brien as Chair of the Cannabis Control Commission and can truly understand that the Treasurer lacked the evidence that meets the statutory standards to remove Ms. O’Brien.”
Among the many revelations in the documents they point to, O’Brien’s team notes how there “was no evidence submitted that O’Brien’s conduct towards Camargo was intentional or meant to harass her.” They also point out that the officiant who conducted several meetings between the parties himself “stated that ‘[a]ttempting to address this shotgun blast of criticisms from unidentified sources is nearly impossible,’ that ‘without knowing who made the provided statements … the Chair cannot fully defend against them,’ and that the anonymous statements ‘lack the reliability and trustworthiness necessary to protect the Chair’s due process rights.’”
O’Brien’s attorney Joe Baerlein wrote in an email that his client “looks forward to her day in court to finally clear her good name, which has been tarnished by Treasurer Goldberg.” The final hearing which will address the motions outlined herein is expected to be scheduled for mid-to-late August.
