Rov_Scam
22hr ago
Having looked at the case further since posting and seen what legal commentators are saying, they all seem to believe that the UCC filing requirement wouldn't apply in this case. The purpose of the filing requirement is to protect creditors from finding out after a default that the property in which they have a security interest isn't actually owned by the debtor. Hence the requirement that the debtor business not be known to its creditors as typically selling consigned merchandise. It would be difficult to argue that a store dealing primarily in used and resale items wouldn't fall into this category, especially when the creditor in question executed a franchise agreement that explicitly contemplates consignments. Furthermore, courts have proposed a cutoff of 20% of inventory value, and the value of the consigned product in this case was allegedly 50% of total inventory value. There's also the possible consumer goods exception, though this is a weaker argument because the Legos in question were in sealed boxes that had arguably been held for resale and not purchased with the intention of using them for normal consumer purposes.
Honestly it's an outdated rule that should be nixed entirely, since no banks are extending credit based on a visual inspection of the store's inventory. At the very least, they're looking at the average running value of inventory on the books, which would exclude anything held on consignment. But I don't think BAM has a credible argument that they had no idea that the store might accept goods on consignment, which would defeat any argument over a UCC filing. I also don't have much sympathy for Mansell for not making such a filing. I understand the argument that Joe Consumer isn't going to be sophisticated enough to make a UCC filing, but Joe Consumer doesn't generally consign $200,000 worth of goods. I know lawyers have a reputation for saying "should have talked to an attorney" in situations when no normal person would, but I don't think I'm out of line to suggest that when you're entering a complicated transaction that involves entrusting property worth as much as a house to a stranger, it might be worth spending a couple hundred bucks to make sure you don't get taken advantage of.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
That language is more convention than anything else. The FRCP, along with a lot of state rules, only specify that:
Before testifying, a witness must give an oath or affirmation to testify truthfully. It must be in a form designed to impress that duty on the witness’s conscience.
A witness is certainly under no obligation to volunteer information that isn't asked of him. Witness prep 101 is that the witness should answer the question asked and only the question asked, and to limit answers to yes, no, I don't know, and I can't remember wherever possible. In other words, if the attorney asks if the witness knows the time, the preferred answer is "yes", not "4:00". There are obviously exceptions for responses that require additional clarification, though in my experience witnesses generally volunteer too much information as it is, and I've been in too many depositions that took longer than they should have because the witness couldn't answer a question without going off an an irrelevant tangent.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I'm going to give my rundown to those following along at home, tagging @Quantumfreakanomics, @The_Nybbler, @mr_bailey, and @gattsuru since this will include responses to your comments as well. I first want to disclose that I have not watched the Reckless Ben video, have no plans to watch it, and will be relying on the above summary for that side of the story. The day I spend 90 minutes watching outrage porn from a guy named Reckless Ben is the day that I ask anyone here to track me down and slit my throat because I'm obviously brain dead. With that out of the way I have read the relevant averments in the lawsuit against the son and Reckless Ben and the whole Reckless Ben crew, with the caveat that complaints are drafted to put the plaintiff in the best light possible and are accordingly not objective. That being said, there is a duty of candor involved, so I will assume that nothing contained therein is an outright lie.
The complicating factor here is that the son (Bryan) has potential claims against three parties: The franchisee with whom he entered the agreement (Chrystal), the franchisor (BAM), and the new franchisees (Josh [there's also Brandon but I'll keep things simple]). The correct way to go about this would be to sue all three entities and let the chips fall where they may, with the plaintiff being fully prepared to let parties out of the suit once information becomes available that shows they aren't liable. It's highly likely that the latter two parties would have been voluntarily dismissed once depositions had taken place, though it's possible BAM could be held in under a theory of principle-agent liability.
To recap the facts as they're presented in the suit, Bryan went to the BAM franchise owned by Crystal to sell his father's Star Wars Legos, which at the time were valued at $80,000, though this was later adjusted to $60,000. I don't know where the later $200,000 claim came from. There was supposedly a consignment agreement, though nobody has to date produced a signed copy, and he was told that the items would be stored off-site. After Chrystal violated her franchise agreement with BAM a cursory audit was done, showing that there was about $38,000 in inventory at the store, about $5,000 of which was Star Wars-related. Josh entered into a new franchise agreement to take over operation of the store.
Shortly after taking over, Bryan entered the store and confronted Josh about the consigned goods, and presented him with an unsigned copy of the agreement and an incomplete inventory list. Josh said that he wasn't aware of anything being held on consignment, but he was free to look through the Star Wars-related inventory and see if he recognized anything. At his point, Bryan became argumentative and started demanding payment of $80,000. Josh checked the back room for any inventory he might have missed and asked store employees if they knew anything about the consignment agreement or the subject goods, but they did not, and Bryan became irate when learning this, and accused Josh of theft. He came back later with police and ask that the store owners be arrested, but the police told him that it was a civil matter and escorted him from the premises when he became belligerent. He then began privately harassing the store. He contacted Chrystal and demanded payment, but she told him she had no money to pay him.
After the the sale of the franchise was formally completed, Josh gained access to the POS system, which showed sales of approximately $60,000 of Star Wars-related items, though there wasn't enough information to specifically identify the items or whether they were sold under consignment. It should be noted that, upon abandoning the store, Chrystal refused to provide any accounting, inventory, or other records to BAM. At some point after the Reckless Ben harassment campaign began, Josh discovered Star Wars-related items in a locked cupboard and told Bryan that he could look at them and see if he recognized them. Bryan said he wasn't interested in talking unless they were planning on paying the full amount. As a weird twist, Chrystal was also evidently in cahoots with Reckless Ben's campaign, claiming that BAM took her store from her in bad faith.
The_Nybbler writes about the UCC provisions regarding consignments, and while I don't want to get too in the weeds on that, I don't think that they really matter here. There are questions as to whether the UCC would apply to a consumer transaction like this, how Bryan would have been able to intervene in a non-judicial foreclosure, whether or not he can intervene after the sale, whether the law allows recovery from a creditor or bona fide third party purchaser, etc. But assuming all three parties are indeed independent, common law rules wouldn't save his case. Indeed, had he actually made the proper UCC filing it wouldn't save his case. The contention here isn't that BAM is entitled to the consigned items because they were unaware of any lien, but that the items were never in their possession. It looks to me like Chrystal sold the items, kept the money, and didn't bother telling Bryan about it, eventually just abandoning the franchise and moving overseas. Meanwhile, she has every incentive to tell Bryan that she's also the victim here and has no money besides, so he'll direct his anger elsewhere.
Would suing be worth it? Gattsuru writes:
Unfortunately, this is the sort of lawsuit that takes ten thousand bucks for a trivial chance of actually being made whole (and mostly in a settlement), a large chance of getting a useless judgment on a defunct or judgment proof target, and a larger chance of just never having a conclusion that’s mostly a shrug.
Which is true if you believe what's in the complaint, i.e. that the prior franchisee sold the goods and absconded with the money, and that neither BAM nor the current franchisees have possession of the goods or knowledge of what actually happened. The problem is that this scenario doesn't justify any self-help remedies being taken against either of those parties. If Bryan has a justifiable, good-faith belief that the items are worth $200,000 and that BAM is responsible for their loss, then it's worth filing suit. Hell, attorneys take suits on contingency that are worth a lot less. It seems to me, though, that what he wants is for BAM to take him at his word and accept responsibility for something they have no responsibility over. Any way you see it, his actions are unjustified. In any event, they're going to cost him a lot more now than if he had just kept his mouth shut.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I think that for the journalists in question it's self-evident that this isn't a great path to pursue. It's also self-evident that there's a certain class of people who will be willing to do sex work regardless of the social stigma, and if there's some poor sap willing to pay them thousands of dollars, well, good for them I guess. I'm reminded of a conversation I had over a decade ago with a college girl who worked for me while I was with the Boy Scouts. A couple years later she was still in college and still working summers while I had left but come back for a week to help with training. I was on a canoe trip with just her and who would have been her boss. Someone had told me a couple weeks prior that she was dancing at a local strip club that the more senior staff had visited together a time or two in prior years, and we were discussing trying to go there while she was working just to see how she'd react. It never ended up happening, but on this trip she confirmed that she was working there, though our plan wouldn't have worked because she only worked afternoons.
Anyway, she said that the woman who handled the strippers or whatever told her how she could make even more money, because of course she could. The going rate was less than my salary at the time, but a lot for a broke college student, especially considering that it wasn't a 9 to 5. I told her that if you wanted to be a prostitute you couldn't be too selective about whom you slept with, since she seemed to be under the delusion that her clientele would be the same 30s office workers who stopped by the club after work. I asked her if she'd be willing to sleep with the big boss at the time, who looked like a younger, thinner version of Dr. Phil, and she was appalled at the idea. She told me that she was assured that they wouldn't pressure her into anything she was uncomfortable with, etc., etc., but I tried to explain to her that while that may be true, the ones who were overly selective weren't the ones who made the kind of money she was quoting. I have no idea who she ended up sleeping with or how much money she actually made, just that she was eventually canned from the Boy Scouts after she requested time off to work her "other job" and what must have been the worst kept secret was made abundantly clear to management. Needless to say, I didn't expect to spend that day trying to talk someone out of becoming a prostitute.
That being said, I think that the same thing applies to all of these "professions" that promise a lot of money for what looks like not a lot of work, or at least the kind of work one thinks they'd find fun. A friend on mine who teaches high school in a rural area says half the kids think they have a future as influencers and YouTubers. I'd be surprised if a single student she teaches over the course of her career is able to do it for a living, even for a brief period. Most of the people who blew up on YouTube started making videos for their own personal edification without any intention of quitting their day jobs.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
My mother wasn't home most evenings when I was between ages 4 and 7 because she was going to night school to become an RN, which paid more than my dad's job as a machinist. No, they aren't doctors, but most of the menial work you describe is done by Aides, LPNs, Medical Assistants, orderlies, and housekeepers. You don't need a degree to empty bedpans. I doubt the state has any mandatory training requirements for whatever you do, but you don't seem to consider it menial.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
As per the oft-misattributed quote, they aren't paying her for what she does, but to leave afterward.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
If it makes you feel any better, a guy like Dac Prescott makes more in one weekend than you probably will after taxes in your entire working career, though it can be argued that he has to do more for the money. I wouldn't worry too much about AI. If it were all it's cracked up to be you'd have heard at least one story about someone who is making high-end prostitute level income from software he wrote without the help of a staff, and if such stories exist (cue links to prove I'm an idiot), they aren't being heavily publicized. Instead all you hear about is how software companies are telling their employees to use more AI, a trend that appears to be coming to an end now that the bills are in the mail. Supposedly on unnamed company spent $500 million on Claude in a single month, and the rumor is that it's Microsoft, as they cancelled their subscription recently. I don't know if this story is true, but if the impressive Q1 revenue growth shown by these companies was due to the short-lived tokenmaxing trend, there may be some pain when they don't look so good next time around.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The AI radiologist has the same problem as the self-driving car and the AI lawyer. Tech companies can tout their products all they want, but unless they're a value add for a radiologist who isn't getting fired, they aren't going to be adopted. Whenever you hire a professional to do something, part of the cost is paying for the work, but another part of the cost is paying for someone else to be responsible for the work. I can do a lot of things on my own car, but I'm not touching anything that can cause catastrophic damage if I fuck it up. Even if taking it to a mechanic doesn't reduce this risk, if the mechanic fucks up they're responsible for it. Same thing with the radiologist—if it misses a serious problem who is going to take responsibility in a malpractice suit? The hospital? The tech company? Considering that both have spent decades vehemently denying that they have any responsibility for how end-users use their products or licensed professionals under their employ, as the case may be, I doubt either of these is going to change their position just because of AI. The first lawsuit will likely suck up whatever cost savings they see, and I doubt the carriers would be on board.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Not really. Most of what was eliminated has less to do with "job creation" and more to do with specific circumstances that only apply to certain industrial processes. For a made-up example, suppose lithium ion battery manufacturing has special considerations that mean that certain equipment needs an independent fire suppression system, some processes must be separated from others, and some materials need to be stored in special areas. Since most developing nations aren't going to have these kinds of facilities, there's no need to put them in a condensed version. But if you're going to have a comprehensive reference volume for municipalities with varying needs, then it makes sense to include these standards.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
What redirected funds? The story you linked to involved alleged misappropriation of funds by a nonprofit that Karen Bass has no relation to.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Who is allegedly committing this fraud? And for what? Karen Bass is the obvious answer, but I'm not sure what the motivation is. It's a top two election (nobody's getting 50%), and unless something disastrous happens, the chances of her finishing third are slim to none. She's going to have to run against somebody in the fall, and Pratt is probably an easier win than Raman.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Those are some nice theories, but is there any evidence of a proven (or at least widely-considered) rigged election where the vote counting was slow?
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Even for people who do use satellite view, I doubt most are looking at the dates. It seems like quite a stretch that someone who was considering voting for Pratt would switch their vote to Bass based on a Google satellite view, especially since the median voter is probably tuned in enough with local news that they'd know that the area hasn't been substantially rebuilt.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Yes, he's already the world's premiere space guy, and in the modern world that doesn't hold as much sway as being the world's premiere AI guy, which he clearly isn't. If he cared about SpaceX suffering then he wouldn't have made the wholly illogical decision to merge it with a money sink like xAI a couple months before launching an IPO. Since there's no real SpaceX competitor, the company can stand to suffer a little for the benefit of Elon's massive ego.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
See my comment below, but I'm guessing that running LLM queries on the largest search engine in the world even when nobody asks for it costs a lot of money and doesn't add much value, especially when you put it at the top. At least make people scroll past a couple sponsored results before they see it!
Rov_Scam
6d ago
Looping in @Mantergeistmann. My pet theory is that the whole thing is a massive cash grab to bootstrap xAI while the funding dries up for Claude and ChatGTP. The latter two keep saying they want to do IPOS soon, even though the CFO of xAI said the company is nowhere near ready, and there's talk that venture capital is pretty much tapped out. Meanwhile, these companies have contracts requiring them to spend eye-watering sums over the next few years, mostly on data centers that are already behind schedule. In the AI space, ChatGTP is the one everyone knows and has the top because of inertia, Claude is the "better" one that all the smart people use, and Gemini is the one backed by Google that everyone uses all the time without realizing it. The others are all bit players with no real path forward, xAI included.
If Musk can turn xAI into a barnacle riding the hull of another IPO, he can secure a lot of cash that would keep the company afloat. Since he's a true believer, I doubt he cares whether SpaceX suffers that much because he'd rather be the AI guy that he currently isn't. Claude and OpenAI are pushing for their IPOs out of desperation, where he at least has a legitimate one. Why else bundle xAI in with it when it was already part of another company? The other suspicious thing is that I've read reports of Grok getting progressively shittier since the merger was announced. There's some discussion that it's because of NSFW stuff, but that doesn't explain why people on the Heavy plan are getting rate limited to hell (it used to be practically unlimited image generation, now I've seen reports that it allows as few as 15 per day, which is less than you used to get on the free tier). The explanation I see is that since he already has a bunch of subscribers under opaque ToS that allow arbitrary limits, he needs to cut monthly compute costs to make the company look better to investors than it is, and can do so without losing too much revenue since only a small number of subscriptions will come due and not be renewed.
So I looked this up and apparently this is the coldest take out there, though I'm always proud of myself for coming to the same conclusions the experts do on my own. It could still be a shrewd business move if OpenAI and Anthropic run out of cash in the near future, but he could have just bought Anthropic outright.
Imagine the following alternate timeline: Crossfire Hurricane is a public investigation that plays a prominent role in the news cycle for the entire summer of 2016, culminating in Comey's announcement a few weeks before the election that he is considering recommending charges. Trump loses the election. Meanwhile, the FBI has quietly been conducting an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server and it only becomes public knowledge after a leak is published in the Weekly Standard on Halloween. Trump loses the election, and some on the right speculate that the FBI investigation played a major role in the loss. Would you consider Comey a Republican stooge in that scenario?
To be clear, I don't credit it that heavily, just more than somebody yammering away on YouTube. I've since learned more about this case and it's clear that the facts alleged in the complaint are selective at the very least, but that's to be expected. It's also clear that both Bam and the new franchisees aren't entirely free from blame in terms of how they handled themselves, but I'm still skeptical as to whether they actually had as much of the inventory as Bryan claims they did.
Apparently about half the collection was sold at the time of the takeover. This is why even if the collection was correctly valued at $200k, making a demand for that much is ridiculous. Bryan was entitled to 65% of the sale price, and with $100k of inventory presumably remaining, his damages would be in the neighborhood of $65k, which is nothing to sneeze at but well under half of what he's alleging was stolen. Anyway, Chrystal was supposed to pay Bryan monthly and provide some kind of sales statement. Apparently there's some dispute over the amount he was actually paid, and I don't know if these statements were itemized or if they just listed the dollar amount. One of the few advantages of litigation is that it forces you to put the evidence on the record or shut up about it.
So there are two possibilities here. The first is that Chrystal either stole the product or sold it and underreported the sales to Bryan. She did suddenly discover some of it at her house a year after the dispute started. I agree that if this is the case, then a lawsuit isn't likely to accomplish anything. I still think it would have been worth going after BAM, though, because from what I've since learned, even if they didn't do anything, they certainly didn't act in a way that would suggest they did nothing wrong. Chrystal claims that the product was in the store when corporate evicted her. Video evidence shows what appears to be some of it on the shelves the night she gets kicked out, and she's telling them about the consigned merchandise and the new operators don't seem to care. When Bryan went to the store to ask about it, he was given the bum's rush, and Josh and Brandon took the position that since they weren't a party to the consignment agreement, we don't owe you anything and get off our property. I saw enough of the video that it's clear that these guys are assholes in general.
And from what I've seen there's probably enough to keep BAM in the case. What one would normally expect after a franchise foreclosure would be for corporate to run the store while a new buyer is found, and then transfer the store to the new franchisee at a later date. From November 2024 to March 2025, the BAM location in question was in a sort of limbo where the successor franshisees were operating the store but didn't actually have the franchise yet. If any of the items were sold during this period, then BAM is responsible. But it gets better. The new franchisees were running the store beginning the night of the foreclosure, and continued to run it while it was legally owned by corporate. The goods were the subject of a dispute throughout the entire period in question. The nature of the arrangement creates a legitimate question as to whether the franchisees were acting as an agent of BAM corporate, which if proved, would expose corporate to liability even after the new franchise agreement went into place. There are enough factual questions involved here that BAM isn't going to get out on an MSJ, which means settlement is a real possibility. And if they stick by their story blaming Chrystal they'd have to make a case against her for conversion, which is a tall order.
But that's really neither here nor there, because my ultimate point is that this guy had better options than running his harassment campaign, and this isn't some justified act of vigilante justice to protect the little guy when the legal system is inadequate and expensive. The consignment agreement required that the collection be insured. The guy would be nuts for not obtaining his own policy, but it looks like someone was paying for insurance on these items, and it looks like Chrystal was cooperating with him, so the proper thing to do would be to file a claim, the same as you would if someone had broken into the store or if the collection had been destroyed by fire. This is why you get insurance. The claims handler is certainly going to question the circumstances of the loss, and if they think that BAM or the successor franchisees are liable, then they would be able to file a subrogation claim against them, but Bryan would get paid, Chrystal would get paid (though possibly sued if BAM claimed they were entitled to the commission), and neither would care if the insurance company was reimbursed. The claim could, of course, be denied, but if that happens you're back where you started in terms of having to litigate, except it's a lot easier this time. An insurance bad faith claim is a lot easier than the conversion claim they were dealing with, as there's only one party, the facts are a lot simpler, and you know the money's there.
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