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Comment by maweaver | Hacker News Reader

One thing really stands out, which is that Bricks and Minifigs is pointing the finger at the franchisee for an "unauthorized" consignment deal. While the blog post has a screenshot of the contract specifically allowing consignments. Which undercuts a large part of the corporate argument.

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Yeah, that's a glaring issue.

They say it was prohibited in the 2023 operating manual [1]. That's the same year as the franchise contract.

It'd be strange for B&M to lie about such an objectively falsifiable statement.

My best guess is that the franchise and operating manual were simply not in agreement.

(B&M wants to reject the consignment because they want the franchise operator to take liability for any missing or unreimbursed sales.)

[1] https://bricksandminifigs.com/blog/blog/2026/05/28/bricks-mi...

There was a livestream last night where the Bricks and Minifigs COO said that the franchise agreement has a clause saying that the operations manual overrules the franchise agreement and they can update the operations manual at any time. BAM's court filing instead says that the franchise agreement allows consignment services, but "limited expressly to those approved by BAM".

There's good evidence that it was expressly approved in the form of social media posts advertising the consignment on their social media pages. Difficult for them to argue either ignorance or that the arrangement wasn't authorised, both of which aren't really relevant to the demonstrated facts of the dispute.

The social media posts are from accounts for the franchise store. There is no reason to think those posts were approved by B&M corporate.

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