To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

WATERTOWN, N.Y. -- The owner of a chain of head shops in Upstate New York made another appearance in court, and for the second time he showed up without an attorney.

John Tebbetts III, owner of Tebb's Head Shops, appeared Thursday to answer a civil suit filed by the state Attorney General that he sold synthetic and other alternative drugs by illegally changing the way they were labeled. Tebbetts told Judge James McClusky that he thought he had an attorney lined up, but the lawyer told him at the last minute he couldn't do it, a claim Assistant Attorney General Deanna Nelson called "disingenuous." She says that attorney told her earlier this month he wasn't going to represent Tebbetts.

Either way, McClusky granted Tebbetts two more weeks to hire an attorney, setting another court date for October 16th.

"We aren't getting resolution as quickly as we'd hoped, but fortunately we have this temporary restraining order that is keeping the products off the shelves at Tebb's and other head shop locations around the state where these injunctions are in place," said Deanna Nelson, Assistant Attorney General In-charge, Watertown.

Tebbetts is facing nearly $300,000 in fines.

Nelson says she's filed a petition seeking Tebbetts' response to the charges, but so far he has not replied.