Keep in mind you are getting one side of the story. The company seems to be claiming that the franchisee sold the sets and (perhaps) did not pay the consignor for the sales. And that the consignor moved his sets out of the store.
> That said, after ownership of the Salem store changed, we thoroughly documented and assessed current inventory. A few days later, we became aware of the previous arrangement, and compared our inventory assessment to the limited documentation provided by the consignor. It was clear the full list of inventory in his documentation was not located in the store. What items could be reasonably identified as allegedly belonging to the consignor was offered back to the consignor, but that offer was refused.
> A deeper dive into the sales receipts uncovered that a significantly higher volume of the listed sets had sold over the course of the consignment deal prior to the store transition. The consignor also provided a written statement to a podcast that his collection was moved offsite for security reasons. Additional attempts to restore what we could with what was in our possession, was also declined, in writing.
I read through all of this too. It just seems that 1. why would the consignor decline? 2. if he did decline, especially "in writing", then why not post proof?
As you suggest, maybe the reason is more complicated, e.g. some was sold, consignor not happy to have what's left returned and no compensation for what was sold, so refused to just have the smaller amount of stuff returned. If so that could have been much more clearly expressed in this letter. And again they could just post the correspondance.
"why not post proof" - possibly because the company wants the issue to be resolved in real court and not in the court of public opinion.
They could have defended the small claims cases against them in that case?
Difficult to imagine why it would be declined. Did they perhaps insist on unreasonable conditions for doing so, such as fully indemnifying them in the matter? (Just wild speculation on my part since for whatever reason neither party seems interested in providing a full, clear, objective telling of events.)