Franchise bar: Serving those most able to pick up the tab

• 95 per cent of legal fees are paid by franchisors
• Competition rulings
• Cost of doing business
• Delaware-based corporation
• Exponential increase in franchise bar services ($ and influence)
• Franchise relationship sticks franchisee with legal liability
• Franchisor will appeal decision to gain time
• Guilt: pain caused by doing what you know to be wrong
• Lawsuits, individual
• Lawyers being threatened with lawsuits for speaking out
• Lawyers sued by franchisor
• Lawyers threatening franchisee advocates
• Refused to answer politician’s question
• Run the billable hour clock
• Settlement just covers fees
• Sham corporate structures designed to evade responsibility
• Shell companies
• Trademark re-acquired by franchisor after insolvency
• Trial decision always appealed
• Uniform national franchise law
• White-knight lawyer turns black

False hope: once a mark, always a mark

• Alternate dispute resolution, ADR
• Arbitration, transparent
• Buying a job
• Call for a public enquiry
• Call for franchise law
• Class-action dead end
• Contingency fees
• Dispute resolution
• Due diligence
• Formal parliamentary public hearings
• Good faith + fair dealings = false hope
• Government guaranteed loans
• Government investigation
• Illusion of government oversight
• Jackpot justice
• Justice
• Lawsuits, class action
• McDonald’s of…
• Mediation: information gathering that aids the destruction of valid legal claims
• Multi unit carrot
• Old-fashioned idea that politicians are relevant
• Ombudsman
• Private right of action
• Punitive, exemplary and/or aggravated damages
• Raining litigation
• Rate of return on investment
• Reparations
• Return on investment
• Success will happen if I work harder
• Variable rate royalty fees
• Withholding fees is extremely hazardous

Fear makes you lick the master's hand

• Afraid to talk
• Air of desperation
• Bankruptcy, both franchisee and spouse
• Bankruptcy, first the company and then you personally
• Broken relationships, ruined lives and alienated children
• Bullying
• Debt traps
• Disgruntled
• Divide and conquer
• Drive them out of business
• Drop the lawsuit and we’ll give you what you want
• Expand with another store across the street or we’ll sell to new franchisee
• Extortion
• Fear mongering
• Fear of bankruptcy delays the hard decisions
• Fear of poverty
• Investment made during stressful life event
• Lawyers issue threatening letters
• Life savings gone
• Sell or we will sue you
• Suicide committed in franchised store
• Termination threats
• Terrorizing franchisees
• Threatening letters
• Threatening staff
• Threatens to drop client
• Threats against franchisee advocates
• Threats against supporters of franchisee association
• Threats of lawsuits
• Threats of physical violence
• Uttering threats
• Violence
• We will bankrupt you

The usual suspects

• Alberta Franchise Act, Canada
• Alien Tort Claims Act
• Arthur Wishart Act (Franchise Disclosure), 2000, Canada
• Australia Franchise Act
• Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, ACCC
• Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, CCAA
• Competition Bureau
• Crown corporation
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI
• Franchise Sector Working Team
• Franchising a crown corporation
• Iowa Franchise Investment Act
• Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada
• Ontario Provincial Police
• Ontario Public Hearings, Canada, 2000
• Ontario Securities Commission
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP
• U.S. Federal Trade Commission, FTC
• Uniform Franchise Offering Circular, UFOC

Lawyers protect their monopolies

• Able to put kids through graduate school
• Access to justice
• Alan Eagleson
• American Bar Association, Forum on Franchising
• Bankruptcy lawyer going bankrupt
• Bar associations
• Class action only as good as the lawyers involved
• Disbarred
• Disgraced attorney
• Fee surprises at settlement time
• Fiduciary duty
• Fraudster lawyer
• Jealously guarded monopoly on the provision of legal services
• Lawsuits just a cost of doing business
• Lawyer drops client
• Lawyers becoming religious
• Only one side presented
• Professional misconduct
• Protect gross negligence, wanton recklessness and intentional misconduct
• Refuses to take client
• Solicitor-client privilege used to shield white-collar crime (self and others)
• Tier 2 lawyers
• Trust account irregularities
• Wiretap authorization virtually impossible if a lawyer is the target

Intentional insolvency: System worth more dead than alive

• Development deal collapses before risk shifted from initial investors to sub franchisees
• Franchisees are pawns in insolvency flip
• Franchisees dragged into complex legal dispute their franchisor created
• Franchisees' equity destroyed in unrelated part of trademark system
• Franchisor offers to help its franchisees go independent
• Insolvency trustee, consultant and auditor same firm
• Insolvent system renamed and sold to a relative
• Intentional franchisor insolvency
• Opposition to fake franchisor insolvency and ownership flip
• Trustee/consultant does mass terminations during protection to flip to new owner

Sunk Costs: beg to get back 15%

• Assets sold for fraction of cost or value
• Credit note system
• Designed to fail as franchise investment
• Forced to invest in unproven concept
• Leasehold improvements worth next to nothing
• Offered much less than market value of franchise
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: very hard to resist putting good money after bad
• Sunk costs: franchisee's trapped capital keeps them chained to treadmill