FDD Items 3 & 4 · 2026 filing
Church's Chicken litigation history
What Church's Chicken disclosed about lawsuits, arbitrations and bankruptcy in the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. Item 3 lists the material legal actions a franchisor must report; Item 4 covers bankruptcy. This is the franchisor's own disclosure, not a court record, and not legal advice.
Items 3 & 4 at a glance
What the filing discloses
- Cases disclosed
- 6
- Item 3, as counted in the filing
- Largest disclosed settlement
- None stated
- Bankruptcy (Item 4)
- Disclosed
- Franchisor, parent, predecessor or officer
- Filing year
- 2026
- Disclosures cover the prior ten years
Extracted from the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document
Item 3: litigation
2 concluded franchise cases (Georgia/Mississippi 2018 termination dispute settled 2018-2019; California third-party tortious interference claim dismissed 2025) and 3 pending cases, all stemming from the 2022 termination of Royal Texas, LLC's 52-restaurant Houston franchise (breach of contract counterclaims, tortious interference claims by Royal Texas affiliates).
Disclosed in the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document
Item 4: bankruptcy
Affiliate bankruptcies disclosed: (1) QCE Finance LLC/QFA Royalties and related Quiznos entities, prepackaged Chapter 11 in 2014, emerged same year, closed 2015, pre-dating Quiznos brand acquisition by HBCP; (2) Hooters of America LLC and affiliates filed Chapter 11 in March 2025, plan approved and effective October 2025 (one Cajun officer, Alisa Cleek, was a Hooters officer within 1 year of filing); (3) ARC Burger, LLC (Hardee's affiliate) filed Chapter 7 petition April 2026, ongoing. None involve the franchisor entity (Cajun Global LLC) itself.
Before you weigh a lawsuit
How to read Item 3
A franchisor must disclose pending actions and any material civil action involving the franchise relationship, plus convictions or civil judgments for fraud, unfair or deceptive practices, or franchise-law violations, going back ten years. A case the franchisor brought against a franchisee counts too. Item 3 does not include every dispute: settled claims below the materiality line and matters resolved in private arbitration can be absent.
Questions worth asking current and former franchisees, using the contact list in Item 20:
- Were you, or anyone you know in the system, party to a dispute with the franchisor?
- Was it resolved by settlement, arbitration or a court, and on what terms?
- Has the number of disputes gone up or down since you signed?