NuLife Ventures sued by medical device supplier Avacen
NuLife Ventures is an MLM company that markets, among other things, “hydrogen water” devices.
Avacen is a medical device manufacturer and former supplier to NuLife Ventures.
On July 29th, Avacen sued NuLife Ventures for breaches of their reseller agreement.
Avacen manufacture two products; Avacen 100 and Avacen Pro.
As explained by Avacen;
the Medical Devices are unique, patented, FDA-cleared, Class II, OTC, dry heat therapy devices, intended to assist in pain relief relating to arthritis, muscle spasms, and joint pain among other condition.
Avacen claims it entered into a reseller agreement with NuLife Ventures in January 2019.
As per the terms of the agreement;
NuLife agreed to purchase “1500 Products” from AVACEN within the first six (6) months of the contract, or make $1.5 million in purchases.
NuLife also agreed to purchase “4500 Products” from AVACEN within the following six (6) months, or make $4.5 Million dollars in purchases.
Avacen claims NuLife Ventures failed to adhere to their obligations as per the agreement. Specifically, as of June 1st, 2020, NuLife Ventures had only purchased “approximately 1938 products” during the first twelve months of the agreement.
This prompted Avacen to initiate a termination clause on June 1st, 2020.
Said termination clause included a provision prohibiting NuLife Ventures from further marketing and selling Avacen’s products.
Avacen gave NuLife Ventures forty-five days to remedy their breach.
On June 2nd, two days after it had been provided notice, NuLife Ventures advised Avacen it wasn’t going to purchase any more products.
As per the termination clause, NuLife Ventures is prohibited from marketing and selling Avacen’s products.
As noted by Avacen in their lawsuit;
NuLife continues to depict AVACEN’s trade name and Medical Devices throughout its website and on the Internet, thereby confusing the public by leading it to believe that AVACEN is associated with NuLife and has endorsed its commercial practices.
At the time of publication I can confirm NuLife continue to market Avacen’s products on their website.
NuLife also continues to market itself as an “Avacen Global Partner”:
Avacen confronted NuLife Ventures on July 17th, demanding
NuLife to cease its conduct; otherwise, it will immediately file suit and seek an injunction.
NuLife Ventures continued to violate the reseller agreement, prompting Avacen to file suit on July 29th.
As part of their lawsuit Avacen has filed for a Temporary Restraining Order.
On August 15th NuLife Ventures responded to Avacen’s TRO motion.
NuLife Ventures claims
- the Californian court has no personal jurisdiction over it;
- arbitration as part of parallel proceedings in Tennessee State Court should take precedent (NuLife filed suit against Avacen in June 2020); and
- Avacen’s claims are “misrepresentations of fact”.
I don’t have access to the Tennessee state filings so I can’t comment on NuLife Ventures’ case.
With respect to Avacen misrepresenting the facts, NuLife Ventures claims its “actual purchase numbers exceeded the Agreement’s minimum requirements.”
AVACEN’S claim that NuLife breached the Agreement is unfounded and absurd.
Throughout the initial 12 months of the Agreement NuLife consistently purchased as much product as AVACEN informed it could produce.
In fact, the demand from NuLife was so great that AVACEN, through its CEO Thomas Muehlbauer, repeatedly reported delays in fulfillment of NuLife’s purchase orders.
In an effort to help AVACEN increase its production capabilities, NuLife loaned AVACEN the sum of $300,000 in mid-2019.
The Agreement was not materially breached by NuLife. AVACEN thus possessed no right to unilaterally terminate the Agreement.
A hearing on Avacen’s TRO motion was held on August 20th. A written decision remains pending.
Stay tuned…
Update 9th September 2020 – Avacen has been denied a TRO against NuLife Ventures.
Update 23rd September 2020 – Avacen has dropped its lawsuit against NuLife Ventures.
Update 4th March 2021 – Thomas Muehlbauer from Avacen has informed us in the comments below that after dropping their lawsuit, Avacen pursued their case against NuLife via arbitration.
After we filed for arbitration NuLife filed numerous legal actions in which AVACEN prevailed in 100% of them.
As I understand it arbitration proceedings between the two parties is still playing out.
Oz, should that first word be “NuLife”?
I looked at Avacen’s product. It’s a tabletop doohickey you stick your hand into up to mid-forearm, while it puts your hand under partial vacuum and warms the palm. It sells for $2500; 2.5x what they were charging NuLife.
I don’t know how well it works; I only found one study, and it had only 22 subjects and no real control group. Not strong at all. And Avacen’s name-dropping the FDA does not speak well of them.
“FDA cleared” just means the device is not subject to FDA approval, like my heating pad. Why mention the FDA at all, other than to mislead people into thinking the FDA endorsed it?
Ah yes, it should be. Thanks!
Obviously, you’ve only been checking into one side of the facts. Gee, I wonder who your source is.
Avacen is a blowhard. They’re breaking thier contract by starting a new company and recruiting NeLife Reps. NuLife remains quiet& Professional, confident it will prevail in Tennesee court.
Oh, and there is no lawsuit against NuLife. Avacen tried and failed. Avacen has soiled it’s own name and ruined it’s own market.
The US court system in this case.
There most certainly is, it was filed in California. And it is ongoing.
Don’t drink the hyrdrogen water.
Call Avacen phone number. Avacen wants nothing to do with the owner of Nulife who is a big time con man. (number removed)
When nulife realized he was losing the avacen, he got his claws into Echo hydrogen water machines and the pitcher is $1000 to their top of the line unit $5000 which is another scam if you are not worried about cracks in the machine to harm you or bad toxins like what was tested by someone and reported to the BBB (Echo hydrogen water BBB complaints).
Then nulife got Kevin Harrington and crook CshopTV from Florida to do informercials and charge nu life distributors $2000 plus $1500 monthly then keeps trying to upsell $995 more for more and on and on… flim flam con artists are they all are.
Sadly MLM is FULL of them but guess its like any industry like insurnace, car sales, mortgage, scum running ponzi’s, etc.
If Avacen wants nothing to do with NuLife, then why did they drop their lawsuit?
My name is Thomas Muehlbauer, and I am AVACEN’s CEO and the inventor of the patented AVACEN Class II, FDA-cleared medical device.
I have recently been made aware of your question: “If Avacen wants nothing to do with NuLife, then why did they drop their lawsuit?”
OZ, let me try to answer your question: We didn’t file a lawsuit, we filed for a temporary restraining order (TRO).
TROs are extraordinary remedies with a heavy burden to prove no other remedy could possibly protect the interests of the moving party.
Once our TRO was denied, AVACEN chose to take the faster path of binding arbitration to protect its interests.
Therefore, we dismissed our TRO request and filed for arbitration days later. That arbitration is scheduled for August 15th (maybe a year sooner than the court date available for a TRO appeal to be heard in CA during COVID).
After we filed for arbitration NuLife filed numerous legal actions in which AVACEN prevailed in 100% of them.
The most recent ruling was December 11, 2020 in San Diego. Here the court ruled as follows: “The Court therefore DENIES the motion for preliminary injunction sought by NuLife.”
On December 15, 2020 NuLife filed a motion to dismiss their injunction motion using the following language: “Plaintiff NuLife Ventures, Inc. (“NuLife”) through its counsel of record, hereby submits this Notice of Voluntary Dismissal to the Court.”
I don’t think this was a legal strategy because, in my opinion, NuLife suffered a pretty brutal beatdown by the judge.
I hope this clears up a few misconceptions.
Hi Thomas, thanks for stopping by. I don’t want to get bogged down in semantics but a TRO is requested as part of a lawsuit.
It’s a temporary measure that if granted, leads up to a preliminary injunction while the lawsuit plays out.
Once your TRO was denied, you dropped the lawsuit you’d filed it through.
Thanks for filling in the blanks re: arbitration, I’ll leave an update note in the article.
I take it arbitration are still playing out?
OZ,
You are correct on the description of the TRO process. But losing a TRO application does not necessarily equate to a negative finding on the merits of the case. It just means the court decided that our claims can be fully redressed through the typical litigation path.
There are plenty of lawsuits where a TRO is denied and then the parties continue through typical litigation and the TRO Plaintiff prevails at the end.
In our case, we chose arbitration vs further litigation to speed the process.
So those drawing inferences on the strength of our claims from the denial of the TRO is not really fair, which was meant to be the point of my email.
I never said it did?
Good morning. Your comments appear to imply some flim-flam possibility, on the part of AVACEN, re the FDA.
To clarify, I offer the AVACEN device is a Class II OTC Medical Device. This means that the device is FDA cleared (medical claims the FDA allows for the device) as, “safe and EFFECTIVE” for (and I can personally witness to the device’s extreme effectiveness) “the temporary relief of minor muscle and joint pain and stiffness; the temporary relief of joint pain associated with arthritis, muscle spasms, minor strains and sprains; muscular relaxation; and the temporary increase of local circulation where applied.”
In the EU it is approved for the “temporary relief of minor muscle and joint pain and stiffness; the temporary relief of joint pain associated with arthritis, muscle spasms, minor strains and sprains; the temporary relief of widespread pain associated with FIBROMYALGIA; muscular relaxation; and the temporary increase of microcirculation.”
Hope this clarifies the truth about the device and its effetiveness.
Smiles, michael
PS – I have personally witnessed dozens of significant positive changes in people’s pain levels and significant improvement IN their real world function.
The vaccum applied to the hand causes a heat exchanger, called the Arterio-venous anastomoses, in palm of the hand, to remain open, where it would otherwise close down when heat is applied.
The heat infusion thus received, through the palm of the hand, causes the non-invasive whole body application of that heat, through the warming of the whole body’s blood supply.
This has been proven to create muscle relaxation and capillary dilation which improves micro-circulation and thus a more effective delivery of oxygen and nutrition to the cell and renders removal of acidic carbon dioxide and the waste products of metabolism, on a cellular level, more effective.
Thus, the AVACEN creates a powerful improvement in cellular function that medicine, to date, has had no way of even addressing, let alone enhancing.
To complete the understanding of the brilliance of the AVACEN, let me add that when the internal temperature of the body increases the mechanism of cooling the structure is usually to cause sweating and removal of that excess heat through evaporation.
The AVACEN skillfully bypasses that mechanism and causes the required dissapation of heat by stimulating, on a deeper level, the opening of peripheral circulation, thus further enhancing micro-circulation.
There is no confusion. FDA cleared means Avacen has shown the FDA that its device is “substantially equivalent to another (similar) legally marketed device that already has FDA clearance or approval.”
I.e. it’s a “me too” device.
I met Thom a few years ago at another Companies Convention ……. Where he chatted about the device and then after meeting a Research Scientist and being questioned about the device …
he couldn’t answer the questions …. and every time he had to answer anything hard or how and why something is happening … His answer would be — Well … Just read our testimonials ….
He couldn’t answer any of the hard body science questions ….. Imagine that …. When you have NO answer to the question …. Its … Oh well …. Look at the testimonials …..
Nuts.