The disputed hemp Credit: Courtesy of Cynthea Hausman
A lawyer for the Vermont Hemp Company says a lawsuit filed by a woman who claims the business took her crop is “unfounded” and will be dealt with in court.

“There were no guarantees with respect to definitive timelines, whether the crop could be sold at a profit or whether the crop could be sold at all,” wrote attorney Erin Miller Heins in a response posted on Vermont Hemp’s Facebook page. “Obviously, the ability to sell into the marketplace depends on market demand and the quality of the harvested crop, variables that are often unknown [at] the time of planting.”

Cynthea Hausman filed a suit last month alleging that the company’s founder, Joel Bedard, guaranteed she’d make at least $45,000 on the sale of seven acres of hemp she grew on her family farm in Addison. Instead, she alleges, the company harvested the crop in late October and has yet to pay her any money. Hausman also claims she’s asked the company to return her hemp so she can sell it herself.

She has said she needs the money to save the family farm in honor of her ailing mother, who has dementia and lung disease and is currently in hospice care. The farm is in foreclosure proceedings and Hausman’s half-sister started a GoFundMe page to raise cash to pay the bank.

Cynthea and her mother, Madelyne Wight Credit: Courtesy of Cynthea Hausman
“All they have to do is what they said they were going to do — sell and pay me,” Hausman previously told Seven Days. “That’s the contract, and then it’s over.”

But the company, in its statement, denied any monetary guarantee and says it still plans to sell the crop “when there is sufficient market demand.” Heins’ statement says the company has even offered to return Hausman’s crop but has yet to hear back from her.

“Our position is clear,” the company wrote on its Facebook page. “If we are to have a new economy based upon commercial cannabis agriculture, then we have to get used to things like contracts and taxes and compliance.”

Bedard declined to comment further. Heins said she planned to file a response to the suit by the end of this week.

Read the full 11-count lawsuit below:


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Sasha Goldstein is Seven Days' deputy news editor.

9 replies on “Vermont Hemp Company Responds to ‘Unfounded’ Lawsuit”

  2. As creator and producer of HEMP NY CITY, one of the above posted links in the previous comment is of the presentation Joel Bedard gave at the Great Hall in Cooper Union almost two years ago for HEMP NY CITY. I regret giving Joel a platform to speak that day.

    In my experience, I have found him to exaggerate and embellish on a regular basis. My experiences with Joel cannot compare in magnitude with what has happened here but on multiple occasions I have dealt with his hubris and lack of respect for boundaries.

    I see the same personality traits here in the court filing of the case against him in his words, text messages and in his attitude of disrespecting others while plowing ahead with his own agenda. Here is yet another example of a woman being run over by some guy.

    I hope Cynthea Hausman manages to save her family farm. And I hope Joel Bedard learns to stop shoveling the you know what, or, at least stops leaving piles of it on other people’s property.

  3. It sounds like Joel Bedard is in a heap of trouble. Given the history of text messages, it’s pretty clear he was playing fast and loose to try to gin up some business.

  4. Hard to make this up. Is this the old city slicker does farm lady out of her cash, and perhaps her farm? Fast talking con man takes a Vermonter lady to the cleaners? Dealing with any “give me your crop, and I’ll pay you later” guy, RULE ONE: get your money up front or send em packing.

  5. While Joel Bedard mistakenly pursued the love of money over the love of neighbor ( had he dug deep and paid her due, regardless of the sale of the crop he would have earned a life long loyalty that would repay itself in many times the value of his 35 K ( later 45 K), however, the real villain is yet unnamed. For the value of an employees half a day labor and 12 computer generated mailings each year, perhaps in total $300, to be truly generous, the bank has defrauded the farmer out of 2.5 times the value of the land purchase. This is fraud, legalized to be clear, but fraud nonetheless. IN legal terms that bank has not offered any consideration for their part of the deal, in other words they have done nothing of value to deserve the farm. Certainly the legalized fraud continues in that the farmer certainly has paid ( I don’t know the figures but no doubt for some substantial time) a substantial amount already. That the bank has done nothing of value comparatively is legally allowed to theive the farm and resell it without a nickel of compensation to the farmer for the value already paid is the criminal treason of our times. The farmer could be short the very last payment on the mortgage and that bank would steal the entire property even after its received 99% of the terms. Joel is befuddled in his heart, but lets be real with who is doing the harms.

  6. Emily, while the bank could force the sale of the entire property for a debt that is much less than the value of the property, that doesn’t mean it keeps 100% of the proceeds. It will keep what it is owed, plus any costs for initiating the foreclosure, and then Hausman gets the remainder.

  7. Thank you Nate I do appreciate the edification on the point of return should the foreclosure sale reap more than the minor amount of debt. But is not the intrinsic value of happiness and stability of keeping a family on their farm worth more than the dollars that are made up in cycler space to begin with? And while I appreciate the ‘fairness’ of the bank ( tongue in cheek here), Nate, can you address the bigger issue of the lack of consideration, or fair vale that is contributed by the bank. The Bank has, in my mind by moral law, no business making demands of interest that are not in circulation to begin with!!! The bank puts the amount of the loan into common circulation, as do all the ether banks with all their other loans, but none of them are putting the amount they demand in interest into circulation to begin with. This is why and how capitalism ( which it really is instead a faulty monetary design) has created chaos, war, planetary detraction and laid waste to an alive planet that would otherwise give us an abundance, heal us and guide us. A planet that gives us cannabis. Here we have a Joel Bedard, and true my experience of him has been as others have had, one that is not very evolved in his person, one who puts the love of money above the love of neighbor. Yet, the conversation needs to go deeper, It needs to go to a place of where and when did we allow the the enforced competition and the deceitful scarcity of cash from a monetary system that is filled with made up numbers!!!????

  8. Without having personally seen the contract terms between Hausman and Bedard, the sick mom card seems like a pretty weak play – of course, it’s terrible she’s sick, but it has zero to do with this situation. The idea that you can “save the family farm” with a field of hemp and no experience farming, on land that hasn’t been used in years, is a risky proposition, period. A seasonal crop is subject to mold, diseases, pests and market demand. Not an ideal plan for a property that was already in financial trouble to begin with. And Seven Days is playing right along with the “trash VT Hemp Co” narrative and a link to Hausman’s GoFundMe page …. Smells pretty fishy to me…. Wonder who’s pulling the strings on this one? Think for yourselves, people.

  9. Thank you Vermontiest: “Think for yourselves, people.”

    Two sides to every story. Read the counter suit.

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