If you want to know how far Disney has sunk, here it is. They’re attempting to send a lawsuit against them to arbitration using the flimsiest excuse after the wrongful death of a woman at their park.
According to The Guardian, a woman named Dr. Kanakporn Tangsuan died at a restaurant in Disney Springs at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Tangsuan had a severe allergy to dairy and nuts, and the woman questioned the staff multiple times about whether her food would contain harmful allergens. She was reassured by the staff on multiple occasions, only to go into anaphylaxis and die. Her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, sued Disney for damages exceeding $50,000.
But Disney is attempting to wriggle its way out of this by sending the case to arbitration and using the terms and conditions Piccolo agreed to two years ago when he subscribed to Disney+:
Disney, in a court filing reviewed by the Guardian, has responded and argued that the case ought to be dismissed and settled out of court because Piccolo agreed to the company’s terms of use – which state that users agree to settle any disputes with the company out of court via arbitration – when he signed up for a one-month free trial of Disney+ in 2019, and again in 2023, when he purchased the Disney+ theme park tickets using his Disney account.
Attorneys for Disney claim that the Disney+ terms state: “When you create a Disney+ or ESPN+ account, you also agree to the Walt Disney Company’s Terms of Use,” which “govern your use of other Disney Services”. The services include “sites, software, applications, content, product and services”, which include the Disney Parks and Resorts website, they say.
Disney has argued that the terms of use include an arbitration clause that applies to “all disputes” including those involving “The Walt Disney Company or its affiliates” and that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is an affiliate of the Walt Disney Company.
In short, Disney is attempting to send the case to arbitration because Piccolo signed up for Disney+, which makes you waive the right to trial by a jury to use it. Piccolo’s lawyer shot back, saying this all:
“is based on the incredible argument that any person who signs up for a Disney+ account, even free trials that are not extended beyond the trial period, will have forever waived the right to a jury trial enjoyed by them and any future Estate to which they are associated, and will instead have agreed to arbitrate any and all disputes against any and all Disney entities and affiliates, no matter how far removed from use of the Disney+ streaming service, including personal injury and wrongful death claims”.
Piccolo’s lawyer called this argument “surreal.”
The Guardian reported that one lawyer who specializes in wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits, Daniel Zuniga, called Disney’s reasoning a “big legal stretch” and had never seen an argument like it:
“If someone’s doing a free trial for Disney+, I don’t think it’s rational or reasonable to believe that the average person will believe they’re signing away any type of rights that deal with a theme park,” Zuniga said.
“The consequences of such a ruling or such a holding could be catastrophic for the average person,” he added, because “big conglomerates just keep getting bigger and bigger, so how far up the chain can it go?”
Zuniga’s musings are definitely something that should be thought long and hard about. Should Disney get away with this, it would open the door for many corporations to casually slip in these clauses with any contract you sign for any service they render, effectively taking away your ability to sue them in court.
Regardless, it’s absolutely awful that Disney would be trying to weasel their way out of court after their employees failed to adhere to a woman’s warnings about feeding her things she was allergic to, leading to her death. Disney should be doing everything they can to make this as right as possible, not trying to find a way to take this out of court to potentially pay less because the man and his wife wanted to watch Toy Story.
Disney has done a lot of gross things in recent years, but this might take the cake.
(READ: Disney’s Internal Communications Leaked, Reveals a Den of Degeneracy, Swingers, and Naked Bike Rides)
