BAM Franchising has paid the Mansells and apologized for the LEGO Star Wars collection they handed a store in 2023. The deal also gives BAM something new: the right to sue in the family’s place.
BAM Franchising, the company behind Bricks & Minifigs, has settled with the Mansell family over the LEGO Star Wars collection that turned a franchise fight into a months-long internet event.
A joint statement went up on the company’s site on August 19. Signing it: BAM, chief executive Ammon McNeff and Matt McNeff, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best, and the Mansells. It came out of mediation both sides entered voluntarily.
The Mansells got paid. BAM apologized. Each side is dropping its case against the other.
What the settlement says
Two things sit side by side in the statement, and both are there on purpose.
BAM calls the agreement a compromise of disputed claims and says nobody covered by it is admitting they did anything wrong or broke any law.
Four paragraphs down, the company issues what it describes as an “unqualified apology” to the Mansell family for what they lost and what they went through.
Those are not in conflict. A company can accept that a family was genuinely hurt, and write them a check, without agreeing that it caused the hurt. That is most of what settlements are.
What the deal does:
The Mansells confirm they have been paid for what they lost
They give up any right to sue BAM, its bosses, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best, or any Bricks & Minifigs franchisee past or present
BAM and the others drop their lawsuit against Bryan Mansell
BAM says it should have gotten hold of the facts faster than it did
Nobody has said how much money changed hands. A separate FAQ the company posted the same day confirms a payment without naming a figure.
What Bryan Mansell gave up
The term that decides what happens next is sitting in the middle of the statement, written plainly enough to miss.
Bryan Mansell handed BAM his claims under the original contract. BAM can now sue in his place if it wants to, and the Mansells have agreed to hand over records and testify.
Two months ago Mansell was a defendant in BAM’s lawsuit. He is now a witness for it, and the legal claim he once held against the store belongs to the company.
The statement says this puts things where they belong. It does not say who that means.
It does not have to. The document points at how the store’s former operator sold, tracked, stored, and disposed of the collection, and says BAM, Baker Salem, Johnson, and Best never signed the contract in the first place.
The former operator is Chrystal Law-Gorman, who ran the Salem-area store with Benjamin Gorman. She denies what BAM has said about her. She also has her own lawsuit against the company, and it is still going.
How the LEGO consignment dispute started
The facts underneath all this are simpler than the fight they set off.
In November 2023, Bryan Mansell and his father, then in his eighties, left the family’s LEGO Star Wars collection with the Bricks & Minifigs store serving Salem and Keizer, Oregon. The store’s Facebook page talked it up at the time as worth well over $200,000.
The deal, as Mansell described it, was that the store would sell what it could, split the money, and give back whatever did not move.
The store changed hands in November 2024. Mansell says the new operators had never heard of the agreement and did not have the collection.
BAM says its own review found more than half of it was already gone before the handover.
Timeline of the Bricks & Minifigs dispute
November 2023 — The Mansells leave the collection with the Salem-area store, then run by Law-Gorman and Gorman.
November 2024 — BAM ends the franchise. Law and Gorman say the store was taken from them without warning, the locks changed, their stock confiscated, and no money paid. BAM says it ended the franchise properly. Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson take over.
March 27, 2026 — Law, Gorman, and their company sue BAM. They say the company broke its contract, defamed them, and tricked them into signing in the first place.
May 2026 — YouTuber Benjamin Schneider, better known as Reckless Ben, starts posting about the missing collection. The first video passes 6.5 million views. BAM asks Patreon to take his page down, and Patreon boss Jack Conte posts a video backing Schneider and Mansell instead.
Late May 2026 — Schneider is arrested twice in American Fork, Utah, trying to hand legal papers to Johnson at his house. He is charged with stalking, targeted residential picketing, disorderly conduct, and trespassing, all misdemeanors. None of it has been proven and the cases are still open.
May 27, 2026 — BAM and the current owners sue Schneider, Mansell, and others for defamation, running down the business, conspiracy, stalking, trespass, and deliberately causing emotional harm. They attach a claim under the federal racketeering law, which if it worked would triple whatever damages they won.
May 28, 2026 — A judge orders everyone to stop talking about it publicly.
June 4, 2026 — BAM says it is closing the Salem-area store for good and, in its own words, mutually parting ways with Best and Johnson. McNeff offers to meet Mansell, pay him for anything missing, and talk about dropping him from the lawsuit.
June 25, 2026 — BAM and Schneider agree to mediate. A new order lets Schneider talk again while keeping limits on what he can do, and says outright that criticism and satire are fine.
August 19, 2026 — The Mansell settlement lands.
What Bricks & Minifigs says about consignment now
The FAQ posted alongside the statement is where the company draws its line, and it goes straight at the question that made all of this possible.
BAM says that since it started in 2009 the business has been to buy, sell, and trade LEGO, and that taking someone else’s LEGO to sell for them has never been part of the franchise contract or the manual. No franchisee, it says, has ever been allowed to make that kind of deal in the company’s name.
The company splits consignment into two things. Renting out space, sharing revenue on services, taking a cut for bookings, adding extras to a store-run LEGO party: all fine. Taking a customer’s collection and selling it on their behalf: not.
People have been arguing about that line for months. Franchise Times reported earlier this year that the paperwork franchisees receive before signing says they can offer “consignment services,” and Law and Gorman posted images of their contract backing their reading of it. BAM says franchisees get told in training and in the manual that LEGO itself is off limits.
The company also says it has changed how stores work. Collections now get logged digitally the moment they come through the door, every deal uses a form the company wrote, and staff training on behavior and calming situations down is now required.
What’s still unresolved
One thread is tied off. Several are not.
Law and Gorman’s lawsuit is still alive, stuck for now in an argument over whether it has to go to mediation too. What they say happened to them has not been proven. Neither has what BAM says about them.
Schneider’s criminal charges are pending, with a court date on September 15. He disputes all of it.
And the claims BAM just picked up from Mansell have not been filed against anyone. The company says it might use them. It has not said it will.
For the Mansells, it is over. Two men left a collection at a shop in Oregon, and getting to an apology took nearly three years, four lawsuits, two arrests, a racketeering claim, and a mediator.
The full statement and FAQ are on the Bricks & Minifigs site, and also below.
Joint Statement from BAM Franchising and the Mansell Family
August 19, 2026
BAM Franchising, Inc., Ammon and Matt McNeff, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best and the Mansell family are pleased to announce that they have reached a comprehensive and amicable resolution of a private civil dispute relating to the Mansell family’s LEGO® Star Wars collection. The collection was originally consigned to a former operator of the Bricks & Minifigs® Salem/Keizer Oregon store.This settlement agreement is a compromise of disputed claims. It is not an admission of liability, wrongdoing or unlawful conduct by BAM, the Mansells or any other released party.
The Mansells confirm that they have been compensated by BAM for the losses associated with their consignment arrangement and thus are releasing all their legal claims against BAM, its leadership, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson, Brandon Best or any current Bricks & Minifigs franchisee. BAM, the McNeffs, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson and Brandon Best likewise will dismiss their lawsuit against Bryan Mansell.
Through the exchange of records and information during the legal and mediation processes, the parties developed a more complete understanding of what occurred. The underlying dispute arose from a consignment contract between the Mansell family and the Salem/Keizer Oregon store. BAM, Baker Salem, Josh Johnson and Brandon Best were not parties to it. The Mansells’ loss arose in part from the sale, accounting, storage and disposition of inventory by the former operator of the store.
As part of the settlement, Bryan Mansell has assigned to BAM his claims under the original consignment contract. BAM may elect to pursue these claims against those responsible. The Mansells have agreed to provide relevant records in support of BAM’s claims. The parties believe this places responsibility for remedying any remaining fault with the appropriate parties.
BAM recognizes that the Mansell family experienced a genuine loss, prolonged uncertainty and considerable frustration after the original contract was not properly administered by the former operator of the store and during the transition from the former operator to the replacement franchisees. BAM regrets that it did not more quickly access information necessary to understand and resolve the matter. BAM has issued an unqualified apology to the Mansell family for the losses and pain suffered from the events surrounding this dispute.
The parties recognize that many Bricks & Minifigs franchises and employees had no involvement with events surrounding this dispute and hope that this resolution brings closure to everyone affected and all may return to their normal business activities and personal lives.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Bricks & Minifigs (August 19, 2026), the joint statement and the FAQ posted with it, both read in full
Franchise Times (June 23, 2026), Alex Vuocolo’s reporting on the franchise paperwork and the consignment services argument
KSL (June 25, 2026), Emily Ashcraft’s reporting on the mediation deal and what the revised order allows
NewsNation (June and July 2026), the terms of the original deal, the arrests, and Schneider’s own account
That Oregon Life (July 10, 2026), the court dates and the state of the parallel cases