Articles

Another Court Ruling Shows Franchisors the Value of Providing an Item 19 FPR

Date: July 24, 2013

Take-away:  Franchisors cannot rely on disclaimers in the contracts and FDD to protect against claims of providing false financial information.

The Case: In a recent decision, Long John Silver's Inc. v. Nickleson, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky once again showed the danger of a franchisor relying on disclaimers in its contracts and the Franchise Disclosure Document (“FDD”) to defeat claims that it provided false financial performance information in selling a franchise.  The court denied summary judgment for the franchisor of A&W Restaurants, Inc. (“A&W”) and will allow the franchisee's claims of fraud and violation of franchise sales laws to be decided at trial.  The case is particularly noteworthy because the franchise purchased was the claimant's fourth from the same franchisor.

A&W's FDD had what is known a “negative disclosure” in Item 19 concerning the provision of information about the sales or profits at existing franchises, specifically saying “[w]e do not make any representations about a franchisee's future financial performance or past financial performance of company-owned or franchised outlets.”  The Minnesota-based franchisee alleged that, in connection with considering purchase of a franchise to open a new “drive in” model A&W restaurant, the franchisor provided “information, including financial projections, which was laden with false data.”  These allegations, if true, would mean that A&W provided a financial performance representation (“FPR”) outside of its FDD, in violation of federal and state franchise sales laws.

A&W followed the usual route of trying to get the franchisee's claims thrown out before trial on the argument that, in light of the disclaimers in Item 19 of the FDD and in various parts of the franchise agreement, as a matter of law the franchisee could not “reasonably rely” on the information provided.  The court rejected the argument that the disclaimers could be used to flatly bar the franchisee's claim that A&W provided misleading information in violation of the Minnesota Franchise Act, because that law  (like the Maryland Franchise Registration & Disclosure Law) contains a provision making “void” any waivers of conduct contrary to the franchise sales law.  Instead, the franchisor will be permitted to use the disclaimers at trial as evidence to persuade the jury that the franchisee could not have reasonably relied on the "projections."

The court also ruled that the disclaimers could not be used to deny the franchisee a trial on its claim of common law fraud (under Kentucky law) with regard to its allegation that the projections were based on false data about other locations' sales or earnings.  In the words of the court, “A broadly-worded, strategically placed disclaimer should not negate reliance as a matter of law where A&W allegedly shared objectively false data to induce Defendant to enter into the Franchise Agreement.”  Therefore summary judgment was denied and the franchisee's fraud claim will proceed to trial, with A&W potentially liable for punitive damages if the franchisee prevails on that claim.

Further thoughts: Given that the franchisee in this case already owned three other A&W restaurants at the time it purchased the franchise at issue, it would hardly be surprising if it demanded and received specific financial performance information about the other “drive-in” models.  A logical question is, if A&W had included sales and earnings data in Item 19 of the FDD that it provided to this franchisee, would it have been less likely to have faced the allegations made in this case?  In this author's opinion, based on more than 15 years of representing franchisors and franchisees, A&W would have been in a better position to defend itself if had included such data in Item 19.  The reason is that the data would have been reviewed by A&W's attorneys and probably by upper management, who would have been more likely to make sure that the presentation was accurate and not misleading.  Once the presentation is in the FDD, most franchise salespeople will be less likely to “go off script” and provide information that is more optimistic than Item 19. 

However, even if the franchise seller did provide information beyond the written FPR, at trial the franchisor would have been able to point to the data provided in Item 19 and say, “Look, we gave you the data right here, we made it easy for you to investigate further, and you chose to believe overly optimistic statements by our franchises salesperson.”  Most people would believe that course of conduct by the franchisee to be unreasonable, even it true.  By denying its franchise seller use of an Item 19 FPR, A&W made it difficult to both comply with the law and convince qualified candidates to purchase the franchise -- setting up a scenario where a jury may likely believe that the franchise seller “went over the line.”