FACT-CHECK
This is the plain-language edition of BAM’s statement, fact-checked. Same facts, same grade, none of the case or filing numbers, and nothing hidden in boxes. Every claim below is stated again on the cited edition with the documents attached.
The company behind Bricks & Minifigs, the LEGO resale franchise, finally put out a statement answering the criticism. It has a friendly title, something like “improvements and pending litigation.” Read it by itself and it sounds like a company saying it is doing better and defending a lawsuit. But put it next to two things the company itself points to, its own franchise paperwork and the court order it thanks the judge for, and it says more than it means to. It admits a lot of what it is fighting about. And on one big claim, about the court order, it does not match what the order actually says. We went through seven of its claims one at a time. Most are true, and the true ones are admissions of what was wrong. One is misleading, and one, about the court order, is false.
The statement lists things the company says it has fixed. Here is the trick to reading it: you do not build a lock you already have. So each “improvement” is also the company telling you what was missing before.
The clearest one is about who gets to buy a store. The company says that “since 2023” it improved how it screens new franchise buyers, and it now includes background checks and higher money requirements. Say that plainly: before 2023, it is admitting, there were no background checks and the money bar was lower. That is the company itself pointing at the same year the rest of this story keeps landing on.
The rest of the list works the same way. It now requires a standard system to track trades and inventory, which admits there was no required, checkable system before, exactly the kind of gap that lets a collection go missing without a paper trail. It now promises outside evaluations of inventory when a store changes hands, which admits the store’s stuff was not valued by an independent party before, which is the whole fight over the old man’s LEGO in Oregon. It is adding a franchisee voice to its board, which admits owners had no voice. And it says it will start acknowledging legitimate concerns, which admits the concerns are legitimate.
None of this proves anyone meant to do wrong. It is just the company’s own list of locks it is adding now, and every lock marks a door that was open before.
Near the end, the company says one thing you can check against a single piece of paper. It says it appreciates that the court gave it a court order to protect it from “a host of unlawful activities and reckless behavior.”
The order is real. A judge signed it. But it does not say what the company says it says, and the order settles this itself.
First, the judge did not find anyone did anything unlawful. The order grants a request that the defendants themselves filed, and it was entered because both sides agreed to try mediation. The order says right in it that the defendants dispute all of the accusations and plan to file their own claims back, and that nothing in it counts against their defenses. There is no finding of wrongdoing in it at all. The scary phrase, “unlawful activities and reckless behavior,” is the company’s wording, not the judge’s.
Second, the order actually protects the reporting. It stops real-world conduct that everyone agreed to stop, like threats, posting people’s home addresses, and trespassing. And then it says, in plain words, that nothing in it stops the defendants from doing journalism, criticism, commentary, and satire on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and podcasts. So the order the company is bragging about is an agreed order that leaves the reporting alone.
In that same statement, the company links one of its own posts titled, roughly, “we are parting ways with our Salem, Oregon owners, Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson.” But the court order it is bragging about, signed three days earlier, lists those same two men as people suing alongside the company. So on one day they are co-plaintiffs with the company, and three days later the company says it has parted ways with them. Both of those are the company’s own documents.
The fair counterpoint. Adding rules is what a growing company should do, and a company can honestly get stricter in 2023 without admitting anything illegal happened before. Lots of people hold more than one job, and stores change hands all the time. None of the “improvements” here prove anyone intended harm, and the statement’s apology and its offer to sit down and mediate are real. A company is also allowed to describe a court order in the way that flatters it, and parting ways with an owner can happen at the same time as suing next to him. All this page checks is one thing: does the statement match the papers it stands on. On the store rules, yes, it admits them. On the court order, no. This is general information about public documents, not legal advice, and nothing has been decided by a court, so everyone is presumed innocent.
The company gave a reason for keeping the lawsuit going. It said, in its own words, that “accountability and integrity must run both ways.” Take that at face value. Accountability both ways means measured against the record, and that is exactly what this page did. And there is a longer history to that phrase. The same family that runs Bricks & Minifigs also built an asset-protection business called Legally Mine, and the whole product of that business is arranging a person’s money and property so that if someone sues them and wins, there is nothing left to collect. That is a business built so that, for its clients, accountability runs neither way. So it may be the truest sentence in the whole statement. It just points in the other direction.
Every fact here is stated again with the documents attached: start with the cited edition of this update, which links the company’s statement and the actual court order side by side, then The law and The store. If someone asks “says who?”, the answer is one click away, and the “who” is the company itself.
Primary sources, all public: Bricks & Minifigs’ own statement; and the court order the statement praises, signed by the judge and posted in full.
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