Caravan influencers hit with $1.2million damages bill

Aussie YouTubers ordered to pay damages for ‘misleading representations’ about a caravan manufacturer

The News

Popular YouTubers, The Cartwrights, were dealt a pricey blow after a court judgment earlier this month.

The Australian couple Jackson Cartwright and Kyla Cartwright, who post vanlife videos on their YouTube channel, The Cartwrights, were ordered to pay Melbourne caravan manufacturer Masterpiece Caravans $1,211,349 after publishing two videos about the manufacturer that the District Court of New South Wales found to be ‘misleading representations.’

The Cartwrights are known for their big RV rigs. Image: Facebook @ The Cartwrights

The Key Details

Jackson Cartwright and Kyla Cartwright are known for their ‘vanlife’ content-videos of posts about their experiences travelling in a caravan around Australia, with their family of four children.
According to publicly available documents from the District Court of New South Wales, the couple ordered and paid for a caravan from the caravan manufacturer Masterpiece Caravans Pty Ltd in 2022, and it was delivered in February 2023, where it featured in their social media content.
By about August 30, 2023, the Cartwrights and Masterpiece Caravans were in dispute over the caravan. The Cartwright alleged it had a number of serious defects, which were disputed.
On November 9, 2023, the dispute was settled by agreement, with Masterpiece Caravans agreeing to repay the entire purchase price to the Cartwrights, with the couple agreeing to return the caravan “that day” and to not talk negatively about the Masterpiece Caravans, including on their social media accounts.
On November 9, 2023 and on February 4, 2024, the Cartwrights posted two videos that were considered to breach this agreement and were ordered to pay $1,211,349 for ‘misleading representations’ by the court on May 6th.

Jackson and Kyla Cartwright. Image: Facebook @ The Cartwrights

The Finer Details

The Cartwrights have over 129,000 YouTube subscribers and 77,000+ Instagram followers, sharing their family’s vanlife experiences.

Legal tensions with Campbellfield, Victoria-based Masterpiece Caravans began in August 2023 when the couple allegedly found “a number of serious defects” in the caravan they had purchased from the manufacturer.

Masterpiece Caravans disputed these but ultimately reached an agreement with the couple that they would take back the caravan and refund the $198,500 they had paid for it.

As part of this agreement, there was a note stating that the Cartwrights would return the caravan “that day” and “would not talk negatively about Masterpiece Caravans, including on their social media accounts”.

However, on November 9, 2023, the date that the Cartwrights were reimbursed and the caravan was returned, the first of two videos was posted to their YouTube account.

The video was titled, “HOMELESS!! OUR CARAVAN’S GONE!! RAW 1HR HOME VIDEO STYLE into OUR LIFE – DELIVERY of our NEW HOME”, and there were links to the content on both their Instagram and Facebook accounts.

The video, court documents say, conveyed representations that the caravan manufacturer had forced the Cartwrights and their family to return the caravan with only a few hours’ notice, which caused them to be homeless, and that they had engaged in behaviour to “beat up” and “defeat” the Cartwright family and prevent them from “telling their story”.

On July 28, 2024, a second video was posted on their YouTube channel titled, “WE NEED to TALK … + GET to KNOW US!”

According to court documents, this video conveyed the representations that Masterpiece Caravans makes caravans with “catastrophic defects” and that they are evil and/or preventing the Cartwrights from telling the “full story”, which the manufacturer alleged were misleading and untrue, as well as a breach of their initial agreement.

Masterpiece Caravans also alleges that it has suffered significant damage as a result of that conduct.

Reflecting on the videos and the initial agreement between the two parties, the presiding judge, Judge Andronos agreed.

He told the court that the videos “had wide circulation within the relevant caravanning market” and cited that the “market responses to the plaintiff and its product changed from about the time of (the videos being published) and orders declined significantly from that time”.

Masterpiece has been building caravans for 10 years

The Road Ahead

Whether this marks the end of the battle remains unclear, but because neither Jackson nor Kyla Cartwright appeared in court in this case, a default judgment was awarded to Masterpiece Caravans.

The Cartwrights have not publicly commented on the case, and it appears both videos mentioned in the trial have been removed from their YouTube channel.

Both the Cartwrights and Masterpiece Caravans were approached for comment, but neither responded by the deadline.