The Maine case, which was informally settled last June, is similar to the New Jersey case. The majority of the 11 Maine employees had contended that they were denied the right to organize and that they were told they were agricultural laborers, exempt from NLRB jurisdiction. The 2013 legal opinion concluded that they were manufacturing workers rather than farm labor because they were involved in transforming the cannabis plants "from their raw and natural state." They spent much of their time trimming the dry cannabis by hand, removing leaves and stems, and then running it through a "twister" machine to reduce it to buds that have the "most medicinal value," the opinion said.