Friday, March 19, 2010

Medafor Cryolife Agreement in Jeopardy

ATLANTA, March 19, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- CryoLife, Inc. (NYSE: CRY), an implantable biological medical device and cardiovascular tissue processing company, today responded to Medafor's allegation that it has repudiated the Exclusive Distribution Agreement ("Agreement") between the two companies.

On March 18, 2010, Medafor informed CryoLife that it is treating the Agreement as terminated. Medafor alleges that it had reasonable grounds, pursuant to Georgia law, to demand that CryoLife provide adequate assurances that it would perform under the Agreement and that CryoLife has repudiated the Agreement by not providing adequate assurances. After completing its preliminary analysis, CryoLife believes that Medafor's position that it may treat the Agreement as terminated is not valid and that Medafor's request that CryoLife give adequate assurance of due performance under the Agreement was not reasonable or made in good faith.

This is Medafor's fourth attempt to terminate the Agreement. CryoLife is currently evaluating all of its options related to this most recent termination attempt by Medafor.

On March 16, 2010, CryoLife placed a purchase order of approximately $500,000 of HemoStase(R) product to be delivered to CryoLife on April 15, 2010. On March 18, 2010 after notifying CryoLife that it was treating the EDA as terminated, Medafor notified CryoLife that it would not fulfill this order because CryoLife submitted the order 30 days prior to shipment, instead of the minimum 35 days set forth in the Agreement and the amount requested was more than CryoLife had forecasted as set forth in the Agreement. Assuming Medafor's effort to deem of the Agreement as being terminated is not successful, CryoLife may simply submit a new purchase order.

If Medafor is ultimately successful in terminating the Agreement or if Medafor fails to ship HemoStase as ordered by CryoLife, CryoLife's previously issued financial guidance for fiscal 2010 may be materially affected.

In 2009, CryoLife filed a lawsuit against Medafor for, among other things, breach of contract, fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and violations of Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("Georgia RICO"), alleging that Medafor has violated the Agreement by, among other things, allowing other companies to distribute HemoStase in territories and medical fields reserved exclusively for CryoLife per the terms of the Agreement. CryoLife's lawsuit alleges that Medafor, contrary to its representations in the Agreement, had numerous distribution agreements regarding HemoStase with other distributors in the U.S. and internationally, allowing them to market and distribute HemoStase in the territory and field given exclusively to CryoLife. Medafor is alleged to have knowingly and purposefully withheld from CryoLife disclosure of all but three of these agreements; to have knowingly and purposefully misrepresented that the three distributors with these agreements would not be allowed to compete with CryoLife after the effective date of the Agreement except in several explicitly identified facilities, and then only for a short period of time; and to have intentionally misrepresented to CryoLife that no such contracts existed with any other distributors, and that no such contracts would exist after CryoLife's exclusive rights commenced. The lawsuit also alleges that Medafor has failed to take reasonable steps to prevent other distributors from distributing HemoStase in CryoLife's exclusive field and territory, and that Medafor breached its contractual obligation to prevent competing products from violating Medafor's intellectual property rights in HemoStase, thereby impairing the value of CryoLife's exclusive distributorship.

As specified in the lawsuit, CryoLife brought these transgressions to Medafor's attention on numerous occasions and attempted to work with Medafor to secure its compliance with the terms of the parties' Agreement, but was unable to get Medafor to follow the terms of the Agreement. CryoLife believes that Medafor's actions have deprived CryoLife of significant sales volume and have impaired and delayed CryoLife's development of relationships with customers in its exclusive territory.