CONFIRMED · Clackamas County (Oregon) court record
In February 2024 a Bricks & Minifigs franchisee sued BAM. Plastic Palette LLC, which ran a store called Studio One, and Christina Cooper, an elderly member of the company, alleged that BAM had falsely accused them of breaching, blocked them when they tried to sell out, terminated the franchise, and then took every asset in the store, and that in doing so it set out to destroy the elderly member’s entire investment. At the hearing that followed, BAM did not stand up and defend that conduct. It pointed to a single sentence in the franchise agreement, and the judge sent the whole dispute out of public court and into private, confidential arbitration. That sentence is how disputes like this one disappear before they can ever become a public record.
ALLEGATIONS · unadjudicated; BAM denies them
The complaint’s core, incorporated into every count, is short. BAM, the plaintiffs allege, falsely accused Plastic Palette of breaches and threatened to terminate without adequate notice; unreasonably withheld its consent when Cooper tried to transfer her membership out; then “threatened to and did terminate the Agreement and destroy any equity in the business.” On the conversion count, plaintiffs’ counsel told the court that BAM took “every asset of Plastic Palette,” did so “without consent or permission,” stored it somewhere undisclosed, and “never offered to give it back.” Paragraph 6 alleges that BAM “conspired with John Does one, two, and three to terminate the Agreement.” And the elder-abuse count, brought by Cooper, alleges BAM threatened to “wipe out her entire investment.” None of this has been decided. These are allegations, BAM denies them, and the merits were never reached in court, for a specific reason.
At the hearing, BAM’s counsel kept the focus off the facts and on the franchise agreement’s arbitration provision: “all disputes and claims relating to any provision hereof… or any obligation of franchisor, or the breach thereof, shall be settled by mandatory binding arbitration.” The argument was clean and, under the law, strong: every count, elder abuse included, is pleaded as flowing from BAM’s breach and termination of the agreement, so every count relates to the agreement, so every count belongs in arbitration. Under the Federal Arbitration Act, courts resolve doubts about an arbitration clause’s scope in favor of arbitration (Moses H. Cone Mem’l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1); a tie goes to arbitration. The judge agreed and granted the motion. The dispute left the public courthouse that afternoon.
INFERENCE · strong, structural
Arbitration is private. There is no public docket, no jury, no written opinion, and no precedent, and clauses of this type commonly bar claimants from combining into a class as well, though BAM’s own provision is not quoted here on that point. So each terminated franchisee fights alone, in a closed room, under a presumption that resolves every ambiguity in the franchisor’s favor. The dispute is real; the public record of it is engineered to be nearly empty. That is the same “no litigation” BAM certified to prospective buyers in its franchise disclosure document even while suits like this one were being filed. And it does not cure the disclosure problem: on this site’s reading, an FDD’s Item 3 duty reaches material arbitration, not only court cases, so funneling a dispute into arbitration does not make it vanish from the document BAM owes the next buyer. The clause hides the dispute operationally; the “no litigation” certification hides it on paper. See the going-concern update for the Item 3 problem in full.
The line to hold here is exact. The clause and the order compelling arbitration are confirmed in the court record. That arbitration functions as concealment is an inference, a strong and structural one, but an inference. The judge did nothing improper: he applied the Federal Arbitration Act’s pro-arbitration presumption as written. The opacity is an effect of the clause, not a ruling anyone can fault.
The plaintiffs’ strongest argument for staying in public court was that elder financial abuse is a special category. Oregon gives it treble damages and a channel to the Attorney General, and a vulnerable person’s right to be heard on it, the argument went, should not be quietly waived by a signature obtained “six years ago when they were starting out to buy a franchise.” The court compelled it into arbitration anyway, resting in part on an individual guarantee Cooper had signed. Read plainly, the clause was broad enough to pull even a public-protection claim, brought by an elderly individual, out of the public forum built to protect her. Whether that outcome is right is a live legal question. That it is what happened is not.
Strip the procedure away and the hearing reads like a business model defending itself against the conduct Plastic Palette alleges. A model of the kind alleged here, terminating franchisees and taking their inventory, would stay quiet and repeatable only if the terminated franchisees could not compound into a public record, and a mandatory-arbitration clause is the instrument that keeps them from doing so. It is also that instrument’s limit. Arbitration defeats the isolated civil plaintiff. It does not reach a regulator, it does not cure the “no litigation” certification this site has shown to be false, it does not bind a plaintiff who was never a party, and it does not stop a franchisee who pleads the torts, elder abuse, conversion, fraud, without tethering them to the agreement. The Plastic Palette plaintiffs conceded that their own “lazy pleading,” incorporating the franchise agreement into every count, is part of what pulled them in. What arbitration cannot privatize is the public record itself. Assembling one is the entire point of this project.
The other reading. Mandatory arbitration clauses are standard across franchising and consumer contracts, and the Federal Arbitration Act’s presumption in favor of arbitration is settled federal law, not a loophole. The judge here applied that law correctly; a valid, bargained-for arbitration clause is not wrongdoing, and enforcing it is not concealment in any legal sense. The allegations against BAM are unproven, were never tested on the merits, and now sit in an arbitration BAM was entitled to demand. BAM denies them and is presumed innocent, and nothing here asserts that the outcome of that arbitration is known.
Source: Plastic Palette LLC & Christina Marie Cooper v. BAM Franchising, Inc., Clackamas County Circuit Court (Oregon) No. 24CV06902; hearing on BAM’s motion to compel arbitration, April 25, 2024 (Wetzel, J.), motion granted. Quotations from the courtroom recording, a machine transcription checked against the audio; the arbitration provision and the Schedule 5 individual guarantee are quoted from BAM’s own motion. The “no litigation” certification is quoted from BAM’s FDD Item 3, discussed in the going-concern update; on this site’s reading that Item 3 duty reaches material arbitration as well as court litigation. Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 2 (Cornell Legal Information Institute); Moses H. Cone Mem’l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1 (1983). See also The law. Allegations are unadjudicated; claims remain unproven.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam