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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 sto
by A_D_E_P_T 5mo 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!
- iwontberude 5mo agoThis is essentially what is going to happen with Monetary Metals (although I hope not!)
- throwaway85825 5mo agoTheft by conversion.
- busterarm 5mo agoThey were actually getting a 35% share. This is pure greed.
- gkoberger 5mo agoIt is hard to understand if you only read the blog posted here. They left out a lot of this specificity.
- aaa_aaa 5mo agoThis is because poster takes sides
- calgoo 5mo agoYes? 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?
- dwedge 5mo ago> Whats the other side in this? The difference between you and the person you replied to is that, despite neither of you knowing what the other side is, the other person was curious to learn it instead of assuming they know everything and attacking.
- Retric 5mo ago> This is because poster takes sides Is an attack on the credibility of the writer.
- prophesi 5mo agoCorporate 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.
- askbjoernhansen 5mo agoThe (former) franchise owner shared their contract with BAM that explicitly allowed consignments.
- SV_BubbleTime 5mo agoI’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.
- munk-a 5mo agoI 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.
- consumer451 5mo agoI have heard of the same thing happening with fancy used car dealerships, where cars that were to be sold on consignment have been lost.
- throwaway85825 5mo agoAnd dealers have gone to prison for that.
- psygn89 5mo agoThis is a gofundme I would gladly donate to. Fight the power for what's right.
- fhn 5mo agoYeah, 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.
- FireBeyond 5mo agoReport it. GFM has rules around fundraising around crimes.
- jrflowers 5mo agoYou 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.
- xigoi 5mo agoHow is it not the motorcyclist’s fault? He voluntarily chose to get into a chase with them instead of obeying traffic laws.
- jrflowers 5mo agoHigh speed pursuits are a severe public safety hazard at best and extrajudicial murder at worst. The municipalities that ban them do so under the notion that given a choice between not chasing someone and risking the lives of every passenger in the car, other motorists, the police, and pedestrians, not chasing them makes more sense legally. An officer seeing what they believe to be a busted tail light does not actually constitute sufficient cause to execute a pedestrian crossing the street eleven blocks away.
- ninju 5mo ago
- fortran77 5mo ago> It's not that hard to understand. FWIW, I couldn't follow it either from the blog.
- singpolyma3 5mo agoAs soon as there is a shred of dispute every theft becomes a contract dispute
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoWell, 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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- Aurornis 5mo agoForgive 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.
- usehand 5mo agoIf that's the case why did they lose the small claims cases?
- shadefinale 5mo agoThey 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.
- usehand 5mo agoA default judgement is still a loss. Why would not they not fight back small claims cases, which would be trivially easy for someone with their resources, if they could win?
- altairprime 5mo ago[retracted]
- usehand 5mo agoI don't know what point you're trying to make. But also please watch the video, they submitted multiple separate claims via different aggrieved parties, this totaled $100k, despite the low individual small claims maxima.
- scotty79 5mo ago> 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?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- warumdarum 5mo agoLucky though, you can find somebody with deep pockets to step in and take his share of the case should you win.
- crazygringo 5mo agoBut 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?
- munk-a 5mo agoThe 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.
- whall6 5mo agoSeems like it would be hard to know which blue Lego was Bryan’s
- barake 5mo agoIt was sealed sets, still NIB, not individual pieces. No one would bother selling $200k of loose bricks on consignment.
- whall6 5mo agoLet me rephrase: “blue Lego set”
- throwawaysoxjje 5mo agoThis is a collectible market so Lego sets aren’t fungible, so being unable to keep track of that sounds like negligence.
- gblargg 5mo ago*grey, since it was Star Wars
- 5mo ago
- gamblor956 5mo agoIf 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.
- dfadsadsf 5mo ago>BAM would have become the successor to all liabilities upon taking over the store (in the U.S., at least). Not necessarily and highly depended on how it was structured and state law. It's possible that BAM only took over entity and then all liabilities stays with the same entity (that was bankrupted later). Another option it was only asset sale without liabilities, etc.
- brittlepeanut 5mo agoBy 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.
- apercu 5mo agoSounds like theft to me.
- myko 5mo ago> It seems like theft It is theft!
- rolandog 5mo ago(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.
- Pragmata 5mo ago> 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.
- mcv 5mo agoDo they have any evidence of those claims? So far, all evidence seems to be against them.
- james_marks 5mo agoWhen the parent buys the store, they are also buying their contracts and obligations. Unless the contract was written so poorly this didn’t happen?
- code_duck 5mo agoI 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.
- 8note 5mo ago> "It wasn't our name on it, says right here that the previous store manager signed this, and she's no longer with us." this seems kinda obvious that if they dont have a contract to do consignment, they don't have a contract to the lego at all, and cannot sell the lego
- PatentlyDC123 5mo agoin the post they include the agreement between the previous franchisee and the company, which allows consignment
- overfeed 5mo ago> this seems kinda obvious that if they dont have a contract to do consignment, they don't have a contract to the lego at all, and cannot sell the lego The ancient adage unfortunately applies here still: Possession is 9/10ths of the law
- nerdsniper 5mo agoCivil “Conversion” (as opposed to criminal theft): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(law)
- Suppafly 5mo ago>It seems like theft, but it's a very common civil contract dispute. Theft by conversion is an actual crime, not just a civil dispute.