Camping World awarded damages, attorney fees in legal proceeding

Camping World (CWH), Inc. and FreedomRoads, subsidiaries of Camping World Holdings, won a total victory in the latest legal proceeding arising out of the unscripted television series on CNBC, The Profit. The case was brought by tiny home manufacturer and participants on The Profit, Tumbleweed Tiny Homes, and its CEO Steve Weissmann, who is personally liable to FreedomRoads for $4.1M in damages, and to Camping World, FreedomRoads, and Marcus Lemonis for nearly $4.5M in attorneys’ fees and costs. Arbitrator Hon. Candace Cooper found Tumbleweed and Weissmann liable for their failure to pay back loans they took from FreedomRoads, which allowed Tumbleweed and Weissmann to keep their business open. The company said, “Justice Cooper rejected every one of Tumbleweed and Weissmann’s baseless allegations of misconduct, finding that the “weight of the evidence shows that Lemonis was attempting to ‘save’ Tumbleweed, not have it fail . . .” Justice Cooper awarded Camping World, FreedomRoads, and Lemonis nearly $4.5M in attorneys’ fees and costs and awarded another $5M in attorneys’ fees and costs in favor of two other respondents, NBCUniversal and Machete Corporation. Judge Christopher Liu of the Los Angeles Superior Court confirmed Justice Cooper’s award and entered judgment against Weissmann and Tumbleweed on July 8, 2025. Following Justice Cooper’s award, a recent public filing shows that Weissmann continued to accept customer orders for tiny homes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in customer deposits even though he knew Tumbleweed did not have the funds to keep operating the business. That filing shows that nearly a dozen customers trusted Weissmann with $250,000 in deposits on tiny home orders he never fulfilled, and as of recently, Weissmann had not paid his customers back. This is the second fully litigated case arising out of The Profit. In the first, Arbitrator Hon. Ann I. Jones found “Marcus Lemonis, at all times, acted in good faith with regard to Precise Graphix” and awarded over $7 million to the defendants, including Lemonis and Camping World. Two other similar cases arising out of the show and brought by Fox met similar fates. In one, a New York state court sanctioned Fox and awarded his clients nothing. In another, in Illinois State Court, Fox voluntarily dismissed his clients’ claims against Lemonis after threats of sanctions for pursuing frivolous claims.”