Comment by A_D_E_P_T
18 hours ago
It's not that hard to understand.
A man gave a store merchandise on consignment, signed a contract with the store manager.
The manager lost control of the store to corporate. The goods were still there, still on display and being sold.
Corporate says, "this is mine now" and refuses to honor the contract. "It wasn't our name on it, says right here that the previous store manager signed this, and she's no longer with us." They sell the goods and keep all of the revenue, rather than just their 10% share.
It seems like theft, but it's a very common civil contract dispute. The side with possession and deeper pockets is the side with the leverage, sadly!
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.
I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract. So the corporation trying to reach into the franchise to grab these goods without honoring the contract is absolute BS and they should be dragged through the mud over it.
The unfortunate loophole here is that, potentially, by shutting down that franchise in a bankruptcy the corporation may end up being preferred for being made whole on debts relative to the consigner. Bankruptcy is complicated so while I am pretty sure any remaining goods from the consignment would be returned to the original owner the proceeds from sales that were successfully made might end up in the pocket of the corporation.
Personally, I absolutely loathe consignment. It is an incredibly complex agreement with a lot of weird edge cases about deprecation of goods and the duty to seek a good price that get complex quick. If you have goods like this and can find a store that will buy your goods in bulk you should be very careful in considering how much you care about the price difference between that bulk price and the percentage they list for consignment. A single transaction is usually much cleaner and easier for both sides and in this case (trying to pay for medical costs) having the money immediately can be quite attractive.
If you look at the latest stuff from the previous owner where they recorded multiple conversations / pulled security footage... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedmOopRTm0 1, they were allowed to do consignment deals, 2, when corporate took control, they said they'd take on the consignment liability, 3, BAM outright threatens them with making the legal process too expensive for them.
All of which contradicts the current corporate response
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yeah you cant just unilaterally cancel the contract in which you agreed to hold the goods for sale, and then take possession without any reimbursement.
You either need to pay the sales price of the consigned items, or just give them back.
If you do neither, its the same exact thing as theft. Which is what they did. They took possession of the 200k lego set with no reimbursement. Just plain ol' theft.
> I have absolutely no doubts a court would consider it impossible to transfer goods under consignment to a different entity free of the burden of the consignment contract.
Reminds me of the whole "disney must pay" debacle.
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The problem with consignment is that the consignor wants the maximum price but the consignee wants a quick sale because 10% of a few bucks more means very little and they have to hold the inventory.
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In bankrupty a court appointed liquidator can seize assets and sell them to repay creditors. Of course none of this happened here.
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bricks and minifigs is going to lose a hell of a lot more than this 10% in business
regardless of the law, it’s a very stupid move on the company’s part.
if they had half a brain they’d pay double the commission and pretend it aas internal miscommunication. $40k is cheap versus the pr hit they’re taking right now
The (former) franchise owner shared their contract with BAM that explicitly allowed consignments.
I’ll make sure if I’m ever listing anything through a store via consignment that I remember to ask if the contract with their their franchiser allows consignment in the event that the franchisees folds. You know, typical stuff.
Corporate is lying a lot, and is pretty clearly guilty of theft at the very least.
The bigger problems I see here are:
1. You can't really sure large corporations like Bricks & Minifigs. They've got deeper pockets and can drag it out until you go bankrupt. There's no good legal recourse for this, meaning larger corporations can basically do whatever they want and ignore the law, as long as they only hurt people smaller than them.
2. The police refuses to treat this as the theft it is. There have been several confrontations with police that give a very strong impression that the police is corrupt and protecting the Bricks & Minifigs and its crimes.
3. Reckless Ben's questionable shenanigans seem to be the only way to fight for justice in unequal situations like this. The offending franchise is now closed. The victim still doesn't have his lego or money back, but thanks to Ben, Bricks & Minifigs is now also feeling the pain. Without that, they would have simply gotten away with it. Chance are they've done stuff like this before.
Also interesting are some of the stunts Ben has pulled:
1. Confronted with the claim that it's a civil matter, he tried turning it into a crime, by holding a raffle for one of the stolen sets that's still legally owned by the victim. The winner of the raffle went to pick it up, and was refused, making it theft from a lottery, which is a crime that the police is supposedly required to investigate (they didn't).
2. Several people buy $10k worth of lego from the victim and claim it from the shop. When they're refused, they go to small claims court, which is now possible because it's only $10k. Bricks & Minifigs ignored it and closed the shop instead. There are default judgements in favour of the people helping the victim, but there doesn't seem to be any way to enforce them.
3. He went out of his way to get the company to sue him, which is apparently better than him suing the company? I'm not sure why. But Bricks & Minifigs didn't bite.
The most effective thing has simply been the PR. The public attention may finally get law enforcement to investigate and punish Bricks & Minifigs. Or at least the broader public will know and avoid Bricks & Minifigs, so at least the company gets punished financially. That won't help the victim, but at least it would be some measure of justice.
#1 is a bluff. It would be really hard to drag it out and judges hate that. You are much more likely to end up paying the costs of the little guy as sanctions than bankrupting them or whatever.
This is also straightforward enough and enough evidence exists that it would be hard to drag it out.
>you can’t really sue
You definitely can sue a large corporation and win or force a settlement. The “we’ll drag this out until you are bankrupt” thing is more bluff than reality. Courts do not react favorably to that. Especially when they have direct evidence of those threats.
A corporation may have a litigation cost advantage, but they’re still going to spend more than the $180k or whatever that they owed to execute this drag it out forever strategy.
(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?
The store in question was a franchise so potentially the liability will be limited to just the assets of that franchise. But there's a lot of weird stuff here and it looks like the corporation may have (in a legally questionable manner) removed assets from the store to the corporation during proceedings to shield them.
A representative of the corporation, while taking over the store, expressly states that the corporation is taking over the consignment agreement, on camera and with several witnesses.
Courts are allowed to pierce the corporate veil when that happens.
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Seems like it would be hard to know which blue Lego was Bryan’s
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because, i assume, that they sued the salem location directly?
They wouldn't make any sense, if the whole thing started because corporate took over control and ownership the location.
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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.
This is because poster takes sides
Yes? Take the side of the person getting railroaded by a giant corporation, a bunch of corrupt cops, and a legal system that is built to protect the big, and milk the poor.
Whats the other side in this? Feel bad for the 400 million corp with their army of lawyers? Feel bad for the store owners who scammed the person and acted like a total dick? Honestly, whats your take on this?
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As soon as there is a shred of dispute every theft becomes a contract dispute
Well, you might say that.
> The police, for their part, kept calling it a "civil matter" and declining to investigate. Every single time.
On the other hand...
> In a subsequent conversation after the store closure and lawsuit loss, when Ben indicated the logical next step was to pursue Johnson personally, Josh's response, according to documented accounts, included the threat: "If you try to pursue me legally, YOU stole the LEGOs."
> Shortly after that conversation, someone called in a police report claiming Reckless Ben was transporting heroin.
This is a strange choice by Johnson, since it instantly transforms the civil dispute into a criminal offense.
This is a gofundme I would gladly donate to. Fight the power for what's right.
There's a link at the bottom of the article
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bryan-recover-his-lego-colle...
Yeah, but you don't know the whole story. There was a young motorcyclists who ran from the police and killed in a crashed. His family has a go-fund me still just to collect money.
You should post the link to that. Police chases costing people’s lives is an awful thing, anybody that’s ever seen a cop driving 130mph because they think they’re Knight Rider might want to donate.
Report it. GFM has rules around fundraising around crimes.
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.
And dealers have gone to prison for that.
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.
The store (as managed by the second group) lost the suit, if they were negligent they still owe the consigner. What's missing is the relationship between the second group and the corporate parent. Seems there's some reason the liability from the lawsuit doesn't transfer to the corporation.
> The store (as managed by the second group) lost the suit, if they were negligent they still owe the consigner. What's missing is the relationship between the second group and the corporate parent.
This does seem like a very key point that keeps getting ignored for the sake of a simpler story.
Everyone keeps talking about this lawsuit loss, but what lawsuit? Against whom? The article doesn't even explain, but it's starting to look like the lawsuit was against the former owners, contrary to the ragebait "Bricks and Minifigs stole..." title
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If that's the case why did they lose the small claims cases?
They lost default judgements because they did not appear. Either they thought it was fake or they thought they'd lose, but they were served and did not appear.
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Who is "they"?
Bricks and Minifigs? Or the previous owners?
Do you mind citing your sources at least? The linked article refers to a "lawsuit loss" but doesn't explain who it was against or what it was for.
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Reckless Ben's video I would rank as one of the top 3 best YouTube videos I have ever seen. I had never seen this guy before but this video was wild. It's a mix of reporting and trolling and questionable legal tactics. The evidence in the video seems pretty hard to dispute. Of course there is 2 sides to everything but I strongly believe bam is the bad guy here.
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.
Do they have any evidence of those claims? So far, all evidence seems to be against them.