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 Genoside07 wrote:
I plan to hold out to see if Kickstarter will force them to give us refunds..

Kickstarter won't do squat.

But a class action lawsuit may...

Js379 wrote:
First time poster here. Regarding PB changing the terms of their agreement via their response email, it works like this. The Uniform Commerce Code did away with the Mirror Image rule, which used to require that an acceptance of a contract had to accept the contract under the terms it was offered. That is no longer the case. The other party can accept a contract while changing the terms. If they choose to do so, it is up to the originating party to then refuse the altered terms. If they did not specifically refuse the new terms, then the contract is binding. So if you ask for wave one stuff and PB responds by saying "sure, and btw, this means you forfeit any future claims" then that is binding unless you respond with a statement specifically stating that you do not accept those terms.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw, this is under US standards, international standards still maintain the Mirror Image rule.

Yep, you are correct that the UCC does away with the mirror image rule. What you are forgetting is that PB lost protection of the UCC under (off the top of my head) sections: 2-201, 2-301, 2-602, 2-607, 2-609, etc.

2-301 is what really kills them. PB voided their protection under the UCC and simply do not get it.

If this went to trial (and I'm guessing it never will), PB's lawyer will certainly cite UCC. We other side will just say, that PB did not operate "in good faith", which is defined (legally) as: "good faith in the case of a merchant means honesty in fact and the observance of reasonable commercial standards of fair dealing in the trade". PB did not operation "in good" faith, hence UCC doesn't apply.

Contracts are a 2-way street. And in the USA, Various measures exist to generally give fair information to both parties (discovery, static terms, etc). PB clearly had some very loose contract with us KS backers (the ToS) and PB clearly did not share all of the info with us. Later PB asked us to enter into a new agreement (hence changing the KS ToS) and did that without offering the correct info.

Nothing PB did will stand up in any court.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 n815e wrote:

evancich wrote:
Don't forget you'll have to explain Robotech, mini war gaming and PB to the judge.

As a grown person.

Yes, your honor, I play with toy soldiers from a cartoon in the 1980s. No I can't play my game with these toys I need toys that look a tiny bit different to REALLY play it.

And, Kev slaps down a quote from China (that nobody can read) and says that is from a week ago and production will maybe start in 2 months. This person is crazy and I don't know why I'm here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I was giving an analogy of what the legal bars are.

Lowest in MD is a temp peace order, which is about 51%. The other is 91%, almost twice.

Do you think anybody here in a few hours can talk a judge into that PB isn't "working" on it? When the bar is that much higher?

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius]

You will likely have a judge that has never seen a VT.
Awesome, you get to explain Robotech to them. Also, war gaming. How long do you think that will take? An hour? 2? Your lawyer is charging you $400/hour to do this.

Ok, Judge understands Robotech and table top gaming. Great! Why can't you play with models that look a bit different than the other models? Don't forget that laptops and phones are often banned in courts rooms. So, did you print it out? If you did, that just cost you some para-legal time. Woot! Assuming the judge can tell the difference between the weapon load out or the red and white VT is different than yellow and black VT and we NEED different models for both.

Cool, PB's lawyer allowed you to go down a rabbit-hole to explain this.

Back when I first posted this, PB could just say, we are working on it.

Now, PB can just say
"Your, honor, we tried. We got in over our heads and spent all of the money to satisfy a demanding customer base. We couldn't and we failed. The KS ToS say we owe refunds. We simply don't have the money to do that. We offered them vary similar products in an effort to make them whole."

We live in a very, very small hobby. You are incorrect in believing that a judge will understand or care about the differences in various VTs.

In law, you never ever want to appear before a judge. You always, always want to settle.

The judge could just look at this and say: fine PB made a reasonable offer, they lost the license, and are out of $. End of case.
or
PB has a chance at various bankruptcies
or
This was a bad suit and the backers owe PB's lawyer costs
or
PB has money left over from the KS and that isn't enough to make the new toys, but PB gets to keep the money and the backers that didn't take the deal are out.

I am definitely not a lawyer, but I don't understand why one needs to fall down the rabbit hole of 'what is Robotech' and 'what is a VT'.

"Palladium Books agreed to provide an explicit list of items in exchange for backing for a certain dollar value. I paid to receive X, Y, and Z in their pledge manager, of which only X was delivered. Kickstarter ToU as of the time of that campaign states that if a Creator is unable to produce some or all of a product, they are to provide refunds for the missing items/elements. Palladium's own words indicate that if they are unable to complete the project, they will provide refunds."

Getting into the weeds of miniature gaming seems like a lost cause. It's a transaction that they specified an outcome to (delivery or refund) and are now refusing to make good on the refund element. If we're being unreasonably generous, one might write off the remnants of the Battle Cry tiers. But the pledge manager involved explicitly paying $X for Product Y.

They say that the KS money is gone, then they should be able to prove that with detailed receipts, that do not show that they over-purchased Wave One stock with KS funds, or spent an egregious amount of it on funding their other projects and keeping the lights on. Or flat out mismanaged/getting swindled by other companies. Wyrd manages to product dozens of figures of varying sizes in plastic every year, I doubt they're paying 1.5m per dozen (as an example of another small company in the industry).

And (again, not a lawyer), I don't see why they'd be limited to supplying refunds purely from remaining KS money (if any). They have stock on hand, they have sales, hell they're probably going to take some money in from whatever fire sale they have on remaining RRT product. If they were being reasonable'ish and offering a pennies on the dollar return, even one tied to their sales of the remaining RRT stock, at least it'd be something.

The KS terms and PB's own words said they'd offer a refund. Not "we'll offer a refund if it's convenient".

If they didn't want to end up in a state where they'd only be able to pay off a portion of what backers are owed through essentially committing company suicide, maybe they should've thought harder about that while they fethed us around for the last 3'ish years (counting the production and shipping of Wave One as the semi-pre-fethery period, or the "not at egregiously fething with us" period). And does that not matter at all? Proclaiming all is well for year after year, until suddenly the other shoe drops? That might not be explicitly illegal (misrepresentation? Fraud? I don't know, see the often repeated "not a lawyer" part of this), but it's shady as feth. It makes all of their updates, especially since Scott came onboard, less about informing us, and more about delaying potential backer legal action. Which a lot of us called at the time. He was literally the new name spouting the old lies.

The 'omg it's about toys lawl' thing has come up in a number of conversations on the KS comments. This isn't a new line of discourse. It is also, imo (again, not a lawyer) a red herring. I don't care if it was beanie babies. If someone takes in 1.5m or so, and for that money they say they'll deliver products, and fails to do so, that seems like a problem.

GENERAL IN THREAD WARNING TIME.

Again.

RULE #1 IS "BE POLITE".

It is a MANDATORY condition of posting here on Dakka Dakka.

 TwoGunBob wrote:
Palladium will probably be working on it, not send anything, but still try to hold people to the contract they are including with each trade that the contract is settled.

That might allow them to close your book on Wave 2, but I'd think you could then get them on non-delivery of the substitute items. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll offer some other exchange, say 1/4 value of the offered wave 1 exchange itens for full retail value crap from their catalog. You'll just have to pay shipping again.

 Forar wrote:
I am definitely not a lawyer, but I don't understand why one needs to fall down the rabbit hole of 'what is Robotech' and 'what is a VT'.

"Palladium Books agreed to provide an explicit list of items in exchange for backing for a certain dollar value. I paid to receive X, Y, and Z in their pledge manager, of which only X was delivered. Kickstarter ToU as of the time of that campaign states that if a Creator is unable to produce some or all of a product, they are to provide refunds for the missing items/elements. Palladium's own words indicate that if they are unable to complete the project, they will provide refunds."

Getting into the weeds of miniature gaming seems like a lost cause. It's a transaction that they specified an outcome to (delivery or refund) and are now refusing to make good on the refund element. If we're being unreasonably generous, one might write off the remnants of the Battle Cry tiers. But the pledge manager involved explicitly paying $X for Product Y.

They say that the KS money is gone, then they should be able to prove that with detailed receipts, that do not show that they over-purchased Wave One stock with KS funds, or spent an egregious amount of it on funding their other projects and keeping the lights on.

And (again, not a lawyer), I don't see why they'd be limited to supplying refunds purely from remaining KS money (if any). They have stock on hand, they have sales, hell they're probably going to take some money in from whatever fire sale they have on remaining RRT product. If they were being reasonable'ish and offering a pennies on the dollar return, even one tied to their sales of the remaining RRT stock, at least it'd be something.

The KS terms and PB's own words said they'd offer a refund. Not "we'll offer a refund if it's convenient".

If they didn't want to end up in a state where they'd only be able to pay off a portion of what backers are owed through essentially committing company suicide, maybe they should've thought harder about that while they fethed us around for the last 3'ish years (counting the production and shipping of Wave One as the semi-pre-fethery period, or the "not at egregiously fething with us" period).

The 'omg it's about toys lawl' thing has come up in a number of conversations on the KS comments. This isn't a new line of discourse. It is also, imo (again, not a lawyer) a red herring. I don't care if it was beanie babies. If someone takes in 1.5m or so, and for that money they say they'll delivery products, and fails to do so, that seems like a problem.

I hate doing law talking on the tubes...

Again, never appear before a judge if you can avoid it.

Neither side and none of the lawyers can give certainty about what the judge will key on.

Judge A might be ok with being ignorant of the Robotech case they are hearing and might blow by it

Judge B might full stop and want to see the show, models, etc

The judges are figuring out if these small differences in the toys are material.

evancich wrote:
I hate doing law talking on the tubes...

Again, never appear before a judge if you can avoid it.

Neither side and none of the lawyers can give certainty about what the judge will key on.

Judge A might be ok with being ignorant of the Robotech case they are hearing and might blow by it

Judge B might full stop and want to see the show, models, etc

The judges are figuring out if these small differences in the toys are material.

That isn't what I asked, though. This conversation went down the weeds of how explaining Rick Hunter's Limited Edition Veritech Fighter/Guardian/Battloid (or whatever) would be a waste of time. I'm asking why it'd even be necessary. Surely 'X Company failed to deliver after promising us everything was fiiiiine' is worth discussing regardless of what the product is?

I'm not disputing that settling is the smarter play, but that point was brought up, and as a non-lawyer I'm curious why it wouldn't be as simple as "I paid for *items*, they failed to deliver most of them, and both KS's ToU and their own fething statements indicate they owe us a refund."

That seems like a pretty simple question.

But, again, for like the eighth time. I'm not a lawyer. So I'm asking the lawyers in the thread for context.

Edit: you do touch upon this, and I get that the judges can be mercurial or more/less demanding of context, but that wasn't my initial read. Looking over the response again and Alpharius' followup, it makes a little more sense.

As with many things, I recognize that how the legal system works and how random laypeople around the world think it should work are often two very different things.

I think it would come down to "taking things to trial is never a sure thing" AND 'taking PB to court means bankruptcy for PB if you win' and while I realize that many would be OK with that, it does mean that a substantial number of people will be getting nothing.

In particular, the Wave 2 adds are the obvious thing: "I pre-paid $40 for this item that they said they were required to refund if they couldn't deliver. They now say they can't deliver, so I want my refund. Refund me my $40 back"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:
I think it would come down to "taking things to trial is never a sure thing" AND 'taking PB to court means bankruptcy for PB if you win' and while I realize that many would be OK with that, it does mean that a substantial number of people will be getting nothing.

A substantial number of people are getting nothing anyways. PB going BK is fine.

Trying to make my way through the hundreds of pages of comments. Wondering if there is a quick summary for those of us who did not participate in the Kickstarter?

evancich wrote:
Neither side and none of the lawyers can give certainty about what the judge will key on.

Judge A might be ok with being ignorant of the Robotech case they are hearing and might blow by it

Judge B might full stop and want to see the show, models, etc

The judges are figuring out if these small differences in the toys are material.

It depends, what court system and what country are we talking about? If we are talking about the US, then it depends on if this falls within Civil or Criminal trial. You really want it to fall under Civil.

Criminal court, with a jury, requires proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Judge doesn't make any rulings, his purpose is to just make sure the letter of the law of followed (ie: Jury understand what is evidence, not evidence and lawyers are doing their part). An example is, Person-A car window is fine. Person-B walked by the car window and now Person-A car window is broken. A criminal trial requires complete evidence that Person-B did the crime. There has to be evidence that supports and shows, they were the ones who actually broke the car window.

Civil court case, with a jury (which is what this tends to fall under), does not require proof beyond a shadow of a doubt. It only has to be plausible. Using the same example above, Person-A car window is fine. Person-B walked by the car and now Person-A car window is broken. In a civil case, you only have to show enough evidence to make it plausible that Person-B did the crime. You could show video, evidence showing that 8:00PM the car window was fine, Person-A was near the car at 8:10PM, 8:15PM evidence that car window is broken. Providing you can provide enough questionable evidence to show no one else was near the car, the jury could make a probably leap that Person-B was involved even though there is no evidence showing them actually doing the crime.

When it comes to Jury, there is an art to picking your jury. Depending on how many jury members are needed, usually, 3-4 times that amount of jurers are in for the selection process. Through a various set of questions, they sort through the jurers. They tend to remove people who have a lot of 'opinions' and definitely remove those somehow connected or related to the case in question. Those that tend to be quiet, less responses are wild cards. Those that are way biased one direction or another are fine. Each side gets to excuse X amount of people, sort of a, they are excused no matter what. The art is you don't remove the biased jurers on your side, you let the opposing lawyer do that. Sometimes though if they weeded through the selection process correctly, there are too many biased to matter. Laywers don't like those that aren't biased to a degree because they aren't sure how you'll vote based on the evidence. It is essentially drafting at the core, if you have ever played a competitive TCG event before.

Based on the evidence and jurors selection, there is a 60-75% chance one can accurately predict the outcomes of the cases. There are some last items that can throw a wrench into the works, evidence, etc but for the most part the case battle really depends on the selection process. I've seen juries, since they are randomly pulled from a selection of people everyone is biased towards the prosecutor side or defense. If there happens to not be enough jurors because they weeded out too many, they will tend to ask for another batch.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Trying to make my way through the hundreds of pages of comments. Wondering if there is a quick summary for those of us who did not participate in the Kickstarter?

Goes something like this: PB f**ks up, as expected. Tries to throw partners under bus, as expected. Offer bad deals to backers, in lieu of fulfillment, as expected. Backers not happy, as expected.

Sorry, my ability to summarize this flustercluck is a bit limited at this point.

Can PB even afford a jury trial vs quicker bench trial? LOL

 techsoldaten wrote:
Trying to make my way through the hundreds of pages of comments. Wondering if there is a quick summary for those of us who did not participate in the Kickstarter?

The long and short of it is that PB sold the KS as being almost ready to go to the manufacturers, then once the KS closed, they decided to change manufacturers from the ones Ninja Division recommended. So the 3D files ND provided could not be used, and the manufacturer had to re-do them at extra costs. All the delays and faffing about raised the costs of wave one so high that Palladium knew they could not produce Wave 2 with the left overs, so they used the left over money to make more of Wave One, in the hopes of selling enough at retail to fund Wave 2.

Because the models were gak, this didn't happen, and they've been doing a song and dance for 3 years to avoid admitting it. Now they've lost the license to Robotech which means they couldn't make Wave 2 even if they had the money.

This is, BTW, on top of other shenanigans too convoluted to go into, and the exact details listed above may or may not be the actual truth, as it's coming from Palladium which has been lying though the whole process.

 John Prins wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Trying to make my way through the hundreds of pages of comments. Wondering if there is a quick summary for those of us who did not participate in the Kickstarter?

The long and short of it is that PB sold the KS as being almost ready to go to the manufacturers, then once the KS closed, they decided to change manufacturers from the ones Ninja Division recommended. So the 3D files ND provided could not be used, and the manufacturer had to re-do them at extra costs. All the delays and faffing about raised the costs of wave one so high that Palladium knew they could not produce Wave 2 with the left overs, so they used the left over money to make more of Wave One, in the hopes of selling enough at retail to fund Wave 2.

Because the models were gak, this didn't happen, and they've been doing a song and dance for 3 years to avoid admitting it. Now they've lost the license to Robotech which means they couldn't make Wave 2 even if they had the money.

This is, BTW, on top of other shenanigans too convoluted to go into, and the exact details listed above may or may not be the actual truth, as it's coming from Palladium which has been lying though the whole process.

Ack. Thank you for the summary.

There goes my dream of having a "Reconstruction Blues" themed campaign with Zentraedi Infantry. :(

I am glad I waited for stuff to hit Retail.

https://www.facebook.com/PlasticCretins/

They have made some Zentraedi infantry.

Television and movie law again.

Let's say a lawsuit is filed on a civil court. What happens with the information revealed during discovery. Is it revealed to the public? Is it placed on the court record but only viewable by parties involved in the case? Can Palladium request that it be blocked from public release? What about any NDA's involved?

I'm really curious at this point as to what actually happened, when the train left the tracks, the when the wheels fell off etc and we obviously will never get the straight truth from Kevin or Palladium. Which leaves only a lawsuit at this point. But if there are ways for them to block the release of that information we may never really know.

I'm wondering if anyone who has taken the trade deal gotten a reply? Even if a percentage of backers took the deal, that's hundreds of Orders. I've seen comments about PB not replying to emails. I'm not sure they can do such a large return in such a short span with 7 employees.

this trade credit's owed for existing product seems very unfeasible. Honestly I think they will run low or out of certain stock that is being asked for, then what's the next plan?

 dreamakuma wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone who has taken the trade deal gotten a reply? Even if a percentage of backers took the deal, that's hundreds of Orders. I've seen comments about PB not replying to emails. I'm not sure they can do such a large return in such a short span with 7 employees.

this trade credit's owed for existing product seems very unfeasible. Honestly I think they will run low or out of certain stock that is being asked for, then what's the next plan?

It’s a false scarity. Part of the problem that got PB into trouble in the first place is that they ordered enough stock to equate 3x what they initially needed for backers. They won’t be running out of stock anytime soon.

Furthermore, I’d be suprised if more than 10-30% of backers have even responded to the latest news, and of those I’m guessing less than 10% are taking PB’s crummy deal. That would put them at having to fulfill 50-150 orders. Taxing for PB, but totally manageable for any other decent company.

Well yes, of some stuff.

But I don't think many (any?) backers want another core box.

I can see PB saying, eventually, "Well, this is all we've got left, so now you get what you get and you don't get upset - and you definitely don't get a refund!"

Autarch wrote:

I'm really curious at this point as to what actually happened, when the train left the tracks, the when the wheels fell off etc and we obviously will never get the straight truth from Kevin or Palladium. Which leaves only a lawsuit at this point. But if there are ways for them to block the release of that information we may never really know.

I now wonder how much the train was on the tracks from the start.
- no realistic estimates for shipping during the campaign
- instantly disregarded ND's suggested manufacturer
- rejected ND's version of the game to make their own
- many stretch goals quite close together
- buying into their own hype (the KS is popular therefore we'll sell tons of units at retail)

Hate to say it, but the chances of a civil lawsuit resulting in a positive outcome for backers is about nil. The costs for Palladium to defend itself would likely wipe out any remaining value, they would have to declare bankruptcy just to afford a lawyer.

I hate reading this story, in part because X-Wing sucks and I would much rather be playing Robotech. Can't believe this effort was a whiff.

Autarch wrote:
Let's say a lawsuit is filed on a civil court. What happens with the information revealed during discovery. Is it revealed to the public?

Typically, companies will petition to have the discovery sealed, and they generally need a good reason to do so.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Autarch wrote:
Let's say a lawsuit is filed on a civil court. What happens with the information revealed during discovery. Is it revealed to the public?

Typically, companies will petition to have the discovery sealed, and they generally need a good reason to do so.

Likely Palladium would claim that the information about how they probably squandered backer funds on retail copies to be trade secrets that are crucial to their business model and would be devastated if other companies were let in on their "secret" strategy. In other words, they fethed up and it's embarassing.

 Stormonu wrote:

 dreamakuma wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone who has taken the trade deal gotten a reply? Even if a percentage of backers took the deal, that's hundreds of Orders. I've seen comments about PB not replying to emails. I'm not sure they can do such a large return in such a short span with 7 employees.

this trade credit's owed for existing product seems very unfeasible. Honestly I think they will run low or out of certain stock that is being asked for, then what's the next plan?

It’s a false scarity. Part of the problem that got PB into trouble in the first place is that they ordered enough stock to equate 3x what they initially needed for backers. They won’t be running out of stock anytime soon.

Furthermore, I’d be suprised if more than 10-30% of backers have even responded to the latest news, and of those I’m guessing less than 10% are taking PB’s crummy deal. That would put them at having to fulfill 50-150 orders. Taxing for PB, but totally manageable for any other decent company.

I sent a counteroffer on the 28th. So they've been swamped, they're dragging it out or have me on the haters list and are ignoring me.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Hate to say it, but the chances of a civil lawsuit resulting in a positive outcome for backers is about nil. The costs for Palladium to defend itself would likely wipe out any remaining value, they would have to declare bankruptcy just to afford a lawyer.

At this point, that would actually be considered a 'positive outcome' for many of the backers.

cannonfodr wrote:

I sent a counteroffer on the 28th. So they've been swamped, they're dragging it out or have me on the haters list and are ignoring me.

I don't think I've seen a comment by a SINGLE PERSON saying they've gotten any sort of response.

Has anyone seen one I've missed?

Yeah, I'm not normally a vengeful sort, but I'd see that as 'a Feature, not a Bug'.

It's less about demanding revenge or a pound of flesh, so much as not wanting to watch a company mismanage a project and lie to us for years, and get away from it scot-free.

Losing the Robotech license is a start, though with HG losing it themselves, that was a matter of when, not if, the license was revoked.

Some people will go on at length with fantasies of people behind bars or scrubbing floors or being left in some dead end office rut. I'm not expecting anything so dramatic. But for people who have worked in the industry for up to decades, who proclaim breathlessly on a regular basis that gaming is their lifeblood and passion, having their actions and inaction have actual ramifications might just have to suffice.

They have lied to and stolen from thousands of gamers. They shouldn't be allowed to do so again, and beyond their own failures, I think its about time that the gaming and Kickstarter community had something to point at and say "yeah, pad your numbers and timelines, don't become another Palladium".

But, again, I'm not expecting anything dramatic. If they have a fire sale and close their doors with little fanfare, okay, whatever. It won't bring me much more than a little closure and one less group of parasites living off the generosity of their little niche market.