CCELL Vapes
Hausfeld has filed a class action antitrust complaint on behalf of Plaintiff Earth’s Healing, Inc. against Shenzhen Smoore Technology Co. Ltd. (“Smoore”) and its authorized distributors—Jupiter Research LLC, Greenlane Holdings, LLC, 3Win Corp., and CB Solutions d/b/a Canna Brand Solutions—alleging a conspiracy to restrain competition in the market for closed cannabis oil vaporizer systems and components (“Vapes”). The Vapes alleged to be at issue were marketed and sold using the “CCELL” name between November 16, 2016 through the present.
The lawsuit claims that Smoore and its distributors are horizontal competitors at the wholesale level and engaged in a per se unlawful agreement not to compete, violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The alleged conspiracy resulted in artificially inflated prices, causing harm to the Plaintiff and other direct purchasers of Smoore’s CCELL Vapes in the United States and its territories.
Smoore, a Chinese company, is the dominant manufacturer of Vapes sold in the U.S. market and presents itself as the world’s leading vaping technology company. It sells its CCELL-branded Vapes both directly and through its authorized distributors. The lawsuit contends that since introducing its first CCELL Vape in the U.S. in 2016, Smoore and its distributors have maintained an illegal agreement not to sell CCELL Vapes below agreed-upon minimum prices and not to compete for one another’s customers.
The complaint alleges that Smoore and its distributors enforced this agreement through formal contracts, employee training programs that explicitly prohibited competition, and in-person meetings. Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the distributors shared confidential customer and pricing information with Smoore on a monthly basis to monitor compliance. Smoore is alleged to have actively policed the agreement, penalizing distributors who violated the terms by deducting money from their security deposits. These practices ensured that no distributor could offer lower prices or attempt to compete for each other’s customers, thereby maintaining supra-competitive prices on CCELL Vapes sold in the United States.
Plaintiff Earth’s Healing, Inc., on behalf of itself and a proposed class of direct purchasers of CCELL Vapes authorized or licensed to conduct a cannabis-related business under any State’s law, seeks damages and equitable relief to restore competitive conditions in the market.
The litigation is captioned Earth’s Healing, Inc. v. Shenzhen Smoore Technology Co. Ltd., Case No. 3:25-cv-01428, and is currently pending in the Northern District of California.