Posted by philips 21 hours ago
I would. They are evil. Treat them like so.
The youtuber Reckless Ben has recently covered the story and spearheaded a campaign of "provocative journalism" against the store[0]. Regardless of whether you support the way in which he goes about things, his video explains the story in much greater detail, and enormously expands on the malpractice of Bricks and Minifigs and the local police department.
Here are some bulletpoints in case you do not care to watch Part 1 + Part 2:
- Bricks and Minifigs explicitly threatened both the previous owners of the store and the original owner of the collection with lengthy legal battles
- The owner of the collection tried going the legal route but was quoted prices that he couldn't afford, so youtube was his last resort
- Bricks and Minifigs CEO publicly admitted of having the collection, being aware of the issue, and not wanting to give it back, while at the same time trying to run PR campaigns denying the allegations.
- BAM leadership went out of its way to create legal trouble for Reckless Ben, involving the police and fabricating false evidence about him
- The local police went out of its way to legally stop Ben, arrest him without probable cause, try to plant Heroin on his car, and even *ended up swatting his house*, dislocating his shoulder.
- All of this while the police department illegally scrubbed any incriminating evidence from the bodycam recordings they were obligated to provide.
This is an *insane* story that doesn't get enough credit. It not only exposes the inefficacy of (parts of) the American justice system, but also the enormous level of corruption and abuse of power of the American police (and tangentially the Mormon community)
I really recommend watching both videos. I promise you it's even more insane than it sounds like.
Of course, that probably won't happen. I can imagine reform-oriented candidates running on putting an end to this sort of crap, and winning a local election or two. Speaking of which, I wonder if anything's come of the Afroman case in Ohio.
It is worth roughly $10,000 sealed in box.
I have some of the original Lego Star Wars sets. All opened and built and etc.
Including this one which I purchased for like $5 or $10
https://www.ebay.com/itm/198386156944
I also have the only Deadpool figure Lego ever put in a set that goes for $75 or $100 by itself. It was in a $20 set.
So the amount they spent could be somewhere in the thousands, but probably below $100,000.
I remember buying one Millennium Falcon set for $250 on sale and then a couple of years later offloading it on eBay for $10K.
There are explicit rules against claim splitting and you risk either the judge combining all of your filings into one case and moving it to a different court or dismissing all of the claims after the first one. There are very good reasons why a person can't keep suing you over and over for the same event.
Then corporate shut down the location to avoid paying the suits they lost.
I suppose it is indeed as Andrew Jackson said: John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!
If it's a corporation, it's pretty straightforward. If they refuse to pay, you get a writ from the court that authorizes seizure of assets.
Usually that means you go their bank and the value of the judgment will be garnished by their bank and given to you.
Occasionally and theatrically, a sheriff will take you to their headquarters to seize property like computers and printers that you can sell at auction until the value is satisfied.
It only becomes difficult if the corporation is bankrupt, which is similar to a poor person who doesn't have the money. Then it becomes a question of prioritization, e.g. do you get paid before or after lenders, and will there be any money left.
Finding a corporation's bank is a whole separate issue, where you have to go back to court for a post-judgement discovery to force them to tell you. And even if they do - or you already knew - you have to get the writ served to the bank, and just hope they didn't move funds beforehand - or else you're back to start.
As GP said, it IS a huge PITA to get judgments paid, and it's particularly menacing in Small Claims. Unless the other side act on some virtue (which, they were already bad-faithed enough to have a lawsuit against them AND lose), your judgment is just an IOU, and actually forcing collection is often way more money — or time in money — than most state's Small Claims limits.
It's a broken system.
This is a franchised retailer with over 300 locations, and this is a value of $200,000+ plus so this is way bigger than small claims.
Like I'd definitely agree with you if we were talking about a $5K claim against a single location in small claims. But this seems to be a $200,000+ claim against a corporation in regular court, as far as I can tell.
The only cases of white collar crime I've seen get prosecuted is securities fraud and that's rich people stealing from other rich people.
(...See, e.g., authors vs. Anthropic. The most prolific author might make somewhere in the low six figures, the average author is gonna make ~$10k, and the lawyers representing the class asked for $300M!)
(Also, the judge is colleagues with counsel, opposing or otherwise; none of them think much of you, which a trip to /r/LawyerTalk will confirm.)
All of this is a choice. Essentially the same choice that we have to have medical insurers instead of a single-payer system; a broken housing market controlled by large corporate interests, instead of one where prices are moderated by a stock of residences built by the government and sold at-cost or lower, as in Singapore or pre-Thatcher Great Britain; broken and spread-thin policing instead of the kind of sophisticated social support system that you would expect the richest country on the planet to be able to afford (and avoids sending the same armed ex-jock to domestic disturbances, mental health crises, car accidents, public school security, etc.). My suspicion is that the fight against change in any of these cases is so fierce because breaking one cartel threatens the others.
The solution here should be to simplify the legal system so legal adjudication is more accessible to non-lawyers, not add more layers of government bureaucracy on top of the existing ones.
The bureaucracy is not the body of law or the judiciary, which were the only government-related targets of my criticism. I agree that the legal system needs to be more accessible to non-lawyers. At the heart of that grievance is the professionalization (read: privatization) of the legal field, which turned a tool for finding justice, despite disputes into a career pursued for prestige and wealth. The problem is that the law and the people who adjudicate it have been captured by private enterprise. The bureaucracy is, like... the court clerks. Who I don't have a problem with, they're quite helpful.
In fact, they'd be integral to this "simplification of the legal system", since what that's essentially asking for is not to make adjudication more accessible, but to move disputes out of adjudication into a procedural venue (where the rules are simple, everyone knows them, and you either follow them and win, or don't and get the hammer).
Across all of the examples - legal recourse, healthcare, housing - what you're looking at is the end of the ambiguity of paradigms driven by private companies with opaque policies and conflicts of interest, and the arrival of an institutional monolith which can be changed by voting in elections. They don't even have to have a monopoly, they just have to be there as an option. I suppose policing is the exception, and while the vision there is unbundling instead of bundling, you're still looking at wresting control for social services out of the hands of the professionals who have captured it.
There are thousands of YouTube videos of people being arrested or being in court on charges of embezzling from their employers, committing fraud, presenting bogus checks at banks, etc.
Hacking is white collar crime. So is mortgage fraud. So is tax evasion and bribery. There are tons of prosecutions of these crimes every year.
The law protects capital and binds humans.
For instance, Martha Stewart (the only example that comes to mind) was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice, not for any actual crime that was being investigated.
It's not like she was the mastermind of the 2008 securities fraud meltdown, but she was the only person to go to jail for it.
I was trying to popularize the phrase "the only thing which is illegal in America is defrauding investors" but I have no social media presence. Feel free to take it.
Regardless I agree with you on capitalism, but my take on securities fraud is less cynical. In late stage capitalism it makes _perfect sense_ that the only crime is to steal from investors - that's capitalism protecting itself.
You know HN is just social media for nerds, right?
Besides, the actual point which is that I have no profile, still stands.
The basis for the TRO was that they offered "sufficient evidence" that Ben, Chrystal etc were a "criminal conspiracy" subject to RICO.
This shit is crazy.
Here's a screen grab of the TRO:
Here was the live stream: