A week after its chief executive told the franchise town hall this case was a fight to protect the system, every party to BAM Franchising v. Schneider signed one paper and filed it. It asks for a routine thing, more time. Its reason puts three facts on the federal record in the parties’ joint voice: the Mansell claim is “recently resolved”; the plaintiffs are “meeting with the mediator today” to answer an offer that came from the people they sued; and the deadline being moved, for the second time, belongs to the defense’s anti-SLAPP motion, the one that would ask whether this suit targets protected speech. The filing is below, as filed.
CONFIRMEDfiled September 1 in BAM Franchising, Inc. v. Schneider, D. Utah 2:26-cv-00593: a stipulated and joint motion stating the parties are “meeting with the mediator today (September 1, 2026) to consider and respond to an offer from the remaining defendants”CONFIRMEDthe deadline being extended is for a “special motion for expedited relief under Utah Code § 78B-25-103,” the dismissal vehicle of Utah’s anti-SLAPP act; this is the second stipulated extension, from September 7 to September 18CONFIRMEDlast week the clerk corrected the docket on the Mansell joint motion: it carried two reliefs, and “MOTION to Dismiss Party” was added by hand
The signatures cover the whole caption: R. Scott Young of Spencer Fane for Benjamin Paul Schneider, Reckless Ben LLC, and Victor Nguyen; Wm. Kelly Nash, Justin T. Rich, and Mina S. Ghobrial of Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar for BAM Franchising, Ammon McNeff, Matthew McNeff, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best, and Baker Bricks; John C. Clarke and Edward Decker of Miller Nash, with Mark O. Morris of Snell & Wilmer, for Bryan Mansell. The plaintiff line is the familiar cast of the Keizer record: the company, both McNeffs, and the two operators whose own words the police file preserves, suing over what was said about them.
The good-cause paragraph does the talking. The Mansell claim: “recently resolved.” The calendar: the plaintiffs “are meeting with the mediator today (September 1, 2026) to consider and respond to an offer from the remaining defendants.” The purpose: “to see if the matter can be fully and finally resolved before moving forward with litigation.” Read the direction of each verb. The offer exists, and it came from the defendants’ side. The party doing the considering, at a mediator’s table, today, is the one that filed the racketeering suit. And the outcome both sides asked the court to leave room for is not victory. It is the end of the case.
The deadline being moved belongs to the defense, and it is not any motion. A “special motion for expedited relief” is the dismissal vehicle of Utah’s anti-SLAPP statute, the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, Utah Code § 78B-25: an accelerated test of whether a lawsuit targets protected public expression, with the movant’s fees shifted onto the plaintiff if it succeeds. It is the one motion in this case whose subject is the suit itself.
Schneider’s side has now reserved it twice by stipulation rather than filing it: an August 5 stipulated motion moved the deadline to September 7, and today’s moves it to September 18. That fits the case’s pattern; the answer deadlines also moved twice by agreement before this. Which means BAM has twice signed the schedule for the motion that would ask whether BAM’s own suit is a SLAPP. The question of whether this case should exist is on a snooze both sides set together, while they discuss ending it themselves. And if the mediator’s room fails, that question is the first one waiting, with the defense’s fees riding on the answer.
At the company’s Q3 franchise town hall, the chief executive described this same case to his franchisees:
“As it relates to, uh, the Ben Schneider side of things, we are continuing to mediate, um, and that is ongoing, um, and, um, progress is being made, um, as slow as it is. Um, and, uh, we will continue to, uh, fight to continue to protect the system in that capacity.”
Every word of that is now corroborated, and completed, by his own side’s paper. The mediation is real; as of this filing it has a date, today, and an offer on its table. The slow progress has a direction: the offer came from the defendants, and BAM is the party weighing it. And the “fight to continue to protect the system” is the case whose every signatory just asked the court for room to see if it “can be fully and finally resolved.” The room got the fight. The court got the paper about ending it. Both are the company’s own words, seven days apart.
Set the rest of that meeting beside the paper. The same executive priced the allegations against the company at “almost 99%” untrue. His warning to the party he had just settled with was “more difficulty and harm” if lines were crossed again. The paper his side signed today spends its one substantive paragraph asking for room to resolve, fully and finally, the case built on those allegations, on an offer the accused parties wrote. Which posture is the company’s, the reader can hold against whichever paper comes next.
One line of housekeeping completes the picture. On August 28 the clerk corrected the docket on the joint motion that closed the Mansell claims: “Because the document requests two possible reliefs, both should have been chosen at filing. Correction: Added MOTION to Dismiss Party.” The settlement this company announced as a good-news story, and described to its franchisees with a warning attached, now sits on the docket as what it is: a motion to dismiss the man from the case, awaiting Judge David Barlow’s signature.
The fair reading, and its limit. Stipulated extensions are routine case management, and a joint motion means every party agreed to every word, including the defense; both sides prefer talking to briefing right now, and that is ordinarily a healthy sign. Mediation is confidential: the existence of an offer says nothing about its terms or its fate, considering one is what a responsible litigant does, and “fully and finally resolved” is a possibility being explored, not an agreement. The special motion remains unfiled and untested; nothing in this filing concedes any claim or defense, and every allegation in the case remains an allegation. The narrow facts are the filing’s own: the offer’s direction, the meeting’s date, the second extension, and which side’s motion the deadline belongs to.
Sources. The stipulated and joint motion and proposed order, BAM Franchising, Inc. v. Schneider, No. 2:26-cv-00593-DBB-CMR (D. Utah), filed September 1, 2026, hosted above as filed; the docket’s August 28 clerk modification, quoted verbatim; the docket’s prior stipulation and order extending the same deadline to September 7; the joint motion on the Mansell claims; the settlement announcement; what the town hall was told about the settlement; and BAM’s Q3 franchise town hall, primary source for the CEO’s remarks quoted above.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; every claim in the lawsuit remains an allegation, and all parties are presumed to act in good faith. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam