Comment by gkoberger

Corporate is also claiming that they don't allow stores to take on consignment deals, contrary to their franchise agreement explicitly allowing franchise owners to take on consignment deals.

(sprinkle a bunch of IIRC's) You're glossing over the fact that they have continued to sell the items in spite of a cease and desist from the brick owners which makes them totally culpable of selling other people's property, and that they're also being sued for unfair termination because the managers were calling in good faith to let them know they were going to take a job abroad.

But the end of the blog post says the man sued and won.

But the store closed to get out of paying.

Which makes no sense if the store was corporate-owned. So why isn't the corporation paying?

When the parent buys the store, they are also buying their contracts and obligations.

Unless the contract was written so poorly this didn’t happen?

It is hard to understand if you only read the blog posted here. They left out a lot of this specificity.

As soon as there is a shred of dispute every theft becomes a contract dispute

This is a gofundme I would gladly donate to. Fight the power for what's right.

I have heard of the same thing happening with fancy used car dealerships, where cars that were to be sold on consignment have been lost.

Forgive me if I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. I just read the linked blog and some of the links within, but I don't have time to watch all these long YouTube videos

> The goods were still there, still on display and being sold.

The store says the full inventory was not discoverable at the store. They said the person gave a written statement in the past saying the collection was "moved off site for security reasons" so I don't think this is really as cut and dry as the YouTuber and blogger people are trying to make it look.

> Corporate says, "this is mine now"

Their statement says they located what inventory they could and offered it back.

I think there's a lot more to this story. I wouldn't really trust the YouTube influencers for the whole story.

I used to sometimes do consignment with artistic products I made, and 80% of the time I ended up being jerked around by the store. Even stores that kept good records and paid for a while would, after a few years, end up with inventory left that they never returned or paid for. Sometimes the stores would close and disappear with the inventory. Other times they’d avoid me. Sometimes they’d insist they paid for everything already, and have done such a poor job of documenting what payments were for that it was difficult to tell. Some people just straight up ran their stores like Ponzi schemes - paying off old consignment with sales from new vendors. As an individual artist, I became very wary of consignment as it’s essentially an unsecured loan. Even worse was that some people who faded away and kept inventory were friends and good business partners, and it’s not like I would sue them for $400.

If the consignment contract was not legal then BAM never owned the goods and would not have had the right to sell them.

EDIT: as other commenters point out, BAM actually did lose the lawsuit over this and now the issue is the consigner is trying to collect the judgment. In that case it would normally be irrelevant that the store was a franchise location, because BAM would have become the successor to all liabilities upon taking over the store (in the U.S., at least). With deep pockets BAM could drag out the collections process long enough to try an extract a settlement from the consigner; the risk with doing so though is that interest accrues on the settlement at statutory rates that are normally higher than market rates and they face the possibility of court sanctions for any attempts at delay that have no reasonable legal basis.

Theft by conversion.

Lucky though, you can find somebody with deep pockets to step in and take his share of the case should you win.

> It seems like theft, but it's a very common civil contract dispute.

What if he reported theft? Wouldn't they have to prove how did they come into possession of the goods they are selling?

They were actually getting a 35% share. This is pure greed.

> It seems like theft

It is theft!

Sounds like theft to me.

> It's not that hard to understand.

FWIW, I couldn't follow it either from the blog.

This is essentially what is going to happen with Monetary Metals (although I hope not!)

By this logic, nothing is theft, and everything is just a civil contract dispute.

There is no need for us to accept your sociopathic assertion that the rich should and will win.

> The goods were still there, still on display and being sold.

This appears to be in dispute.

As per bricks and minifigs:

>It was clear the full list of inventory in his documentation was not located in the store. What items could be reasonably identified as allegedly belonging to the consignor was offered back to the consignor, but that offer was refused.

>A deeper dive into the sales receipts uncovered that a significantly higher volume of the listed sets had sold over the course of the consignment deal prior to the store transition.

It appears they are alleging that the prior operator had sold a larger portion of the consigned goods than they had claimed to the family.

> They were not allowed to do that

Incorrect as the article points out with an image of the contract:

> However, it was brought to my attention by site user @luddevig that Chrystal Law, the Bricks & Minifigs Salem-Keizer store's original owner, was able to pull the franchise agreement between her and and the B&M Corperation, that clearly states that consignment is allowed.

According to the former franchise owner this is a lie from corporate and they were indeed allowed to sign consignment agreements. They showed a contract that says as much as evidence.

Incorrect.

We really need an eccentric billionaire going around trolling all sorts of petty legal trolling. Ben is actively making the world a better place with this, and every person with a networth worth a damn is barely a toenail the man he is.

I didn't know Ben dealt with cults until he revealed he started the "Scientology Sucks" religion, but as soon as the cops started baiting him into agreeing they had cause for arrest, I instantly guessed he had completely accidentally walked right into another cult corruption video. If I had a penny for the amounts of times I saw this exact type of cult discovery happen, I'd have 4, which is a pattern -> ALL cults are corrupt.

You seem to be all over this thread trying to defend the company LOL Are you B&M corporate? If they have such a solid case, why did they lose the small claims lawsuits?

You'd think that if there was a side of the story where the details exonerated the company, you'd think they would share those details. If they moved someone else's property out of the store, then surely they would be able to share evidence supporting this.

All we have to go by is the blogger's account, so that's the story. Just saying "there must be more to it" without evidence that there is more to it, is just vague speculation.