Disney seeks dismissal of wrongful death lawsuit citing waiver in Disney+ terms

In general I agree, except perhaps "Disney can only win.". They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss.

Their service is hospitality and the message they're sending here is very much inhospitable. It might turn into a meme, like "Cancel your Disney+ before visiting Disney IRL". It might make people hesitate and/or choose a different holiday destination. Etc.

This post dramatically underestimates the tenacity of the US plaintiff's bar. Doubly so as of late given the rise of litigation funding.

I would assume that lawyer companies might want to take this on without charging the person just because the potential upside of winning the lawsuit or settling it is so big. I agree with the general case that the legal system is really not accessible to everyone though ofc

I've got a hunch that the "bug in the legal system" is forced arbitration. I have zero actual experience here, but my general feeling is that arbitration rarely works out to the benefit of the plaintiff. Or, put another way, arbitration always benefits large corporations, like Disney. Is there any truth to that?

Disney can only win

If an agreement is not consistent with the law, the law wins en the agreement is (partially or as a whole) void.

> The bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can...

For large corporations and rich individuals that are in the wrong, this isn't a bug of the US legal system. It's a feature.

Dragging the legal process through the courts for as long as possible -- typically, years -- is part of the standard playbook.

As you point out, the goal is to wear down -- and maybe exhaust the financial resources of -- the other party.

idk, to me it seems like no matter what this is a lose/lose situation for disney.

either way it's bad press, which granted doesn't mean much in the long run

assuming the motion to dismiss is denied and it moves forward, regardless of which way it is eventually ruled, doesn't this eventually open it up for federal courts to rule all forced arbitration agreements in T&C's void? (or more likely assuming they rule against disney, limit them to less severe crimes)

though that the widow is willing/able to move forward with appeals process, the latter of which likely won't be possible without some civil rights activists group stepping in to provide pro bono legal assistance

a settlement seems unlikely, since the widow only went forward with this case because Disney refused a 50k settlement, the cheap bastards. They are almost certainly spending more on lawyer fees than it would have cost them to settle this out of court

bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can only win

Judges are humans. Pissing them off from the outset isn’t costless.

This is mostly untrue and essentially the point of judges. A judge's role is to prevent people using ridiculous loopholes or misinterpretations of a law.

Just wait till you learn that law isn’t really law. I once worked on an OSS project for 8 municipalities to handle employee work related driving. The Danish tax law on the area is short and the simplest law text I’ve ever read, and we implemented it as such. Only to find out that the 8 cities interpreted this short piece or law in more than 8 different ways. Yes, even within the same admin they didn’t agree on how it should be interpreted. Some of the lawyers even got in heated discussions because they felt the other were breaking the law.

Anyway it wasn’t till later in the process where one of the lawyers who didn’t seem to have a whole lot of fucks to give explained it to me at the coffee machine. Basically our tax agency decides which interpretation is correct, but you don’t actually have to be correct until they directly tell you that you’re wrong. Which often won’t ever happen as virtually every organisation in the country handles employee driving and there are only five members of the tax agency doing check ups.

I don't think that's a very good understanding of what lawyers do

A lawyer friend back in law school heard that people who go into law are disproportionately psychopaths seeking the ability to manipulate society and power over people for personal benefit.

They tested it by somehow sneaking in psychopath test questions to other law students (without them knowing), who “passed” (not in a good way).

This is anecdata, but I found it convincingly told. I wonder whether a proper study would assess it (having doubts that would be allowed).

It's also for the cred. In legal circles, the first lawyer to do something enters l337 status. You think the legal team for Trump are doing it for the money he's going to not pay them? Hellz naw! Their names will be written about from here to eternity.

I know binding arbitration is the new hotness, but it seems unlikely this is the first time a company has tried to link a generic “absolved-from-everything” clause to an unrelated incident.

I’m pretty sure in the EU this would be dismissed because nobody can be expected to really read the ToS when subscribing to a streaming service.

Hamlet might have had a point.

Perhaps you're thinking of Dick the Butcher in Henry VI? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_kill_all_the_lawyers

Disney Springs is a shopping mall though. You don't need a ticket to visit. It's also a stretch to claim one agreed to certain terms of service by merely visiting a website.

The plaintiff is arguing an equally absurd notion, that because they are suing on behalf of the estate, the estate never signed up for Disney+ because it didn't exist before the death.

So you know, it's all absurdity vs absurdity.

The reasonable human thing would be to say that an autosigned agreement should have a higher bar on terms and in particar no provision in it can be valid for irrelevant things to the immediate service at hand. (Several others have made the same conclusion.)

but even then, forced arbitration should not be legal for anything more serious ever (and isn't in countires with a less broken legal system)

I'm not blaming the victim, but would never trust my life to random restaurants and employees. There's just no way that strangers give a damn enough to risk it, even if you tell them to be careful.

I feel in my bones that sometime in the last five years, large enough companies have lost the fear of pissing off the public. Consumers have proven too passive and docile to act. Big enough companies have become too big to be disrupted. We're about to enter a new phase of powerlessness.

158M subscribers according to the article.

Sounds like someone should let them know. ;)

The most important lesson of the 2010s is that neckbeards and g*mers whine online, but they can't stop paying.

Disney isn't worried about a few thousand customers, and most of them either won't hear of this or won't know how else to occupy their kids' attention

Thousand of customers is nothing to Disney

If this argument actually works, then laws need serious change

This News day article is disingenuous. If you look at the filing (someone else in the thread has posted the documents), Disney is saying that the husband bought the tickets to Disneyland (where the restaurant is, and without which they couldn't have accessed it) using his Disney+ account, and that the ticket purchase includes terms that he explicitly agreed to which re-iterate that the Disney+ terms of use apply as well. So there is some plausible argument that the terms apply to services they received at Disneyland, it's not "yes, but he has also subscribed to our streaming service".

I still hope that this doesn't pass muster - your right to seek a lawsuit for grievous injury or death shouldn't be covered by some checkbox you clicked on a site.

How can trial terms be enforced in perpetuity!?

And the park and restaurant has nothing to do with Disney+ Streaming.

While Disney is indeed trying to get this dismissed as described, I think it is also worth noting that the restaurant in question is not actually owned by Disney. Disney is the landlord.

However the plaintiff is suing Disney on the grounds that the menu of the restaurant was published on Disney's website, and that within this menu was a claim that the restaurant is "allergen-free". But given that it does not seem like Disney produced this menu (only re-published it on behalf of the lessee), that seems like very tenuous grounds on which to sue Disney.

By filing this motion to dismiss, Disney is saying "if that connection is enough basis to sue us, then the pre-existing contract we have with the plaintiff should be enough to dismiss".

I agree with other commenters in this thread that we do not want to set the precedent that a dismissal on these grounds would create, but at the same time I think the plaintiff suing Disney in the first place is overly litigious.

This was filed in may, was there a response already from the plaintiffs?

services in any media format or channel

I suspect they may argue that it covers physical services such as those provided by Disney Springs.

I don't see how you can be forced to resolve all disputes via arbitration. I could understand signing an agreement to first attempt arbitration (with timeouts and bounds set), but it feels like you shouldn't be able to fundamentally sign this right away. They could literally enter into indefinite arbitration if they wanted to.

I think this is a terrible use anyway:

1. The one month free trial contract was only valid during the one month, back in 2019.

2. The contract, even if it was still valid, was with the person who died, and not the family.

3. Due to Disney's claimed negligence, arbitration has become impossible, as they have now died.

If this is allowed to stand, it means that when visiting a Disney park, an employee could gun down hundreds of people, and they would have zero recourse. They could poison thousands of guests, and they would be stuck to resolution by arbitration, which is a process they entirely control.

While I don’t think the Disney attorney’s will prevail, they are doing their job and will not be sanctioned or disbarred.

At worst Disney & its lawyers get hit with a 57.105 motion under Florida Law, if the plaintiff’s counsel files the safe harbor notice first.

No one is being disbarred for filing a motion to dismiss, even if the motion is found to be frivolous - which it might not be, even if the motion is denied.

Or whether having ever done business with Tesla prevents one from suing Tesla if someone else’s autopiloting car hits them.

Presumably a sensible court would hold that no possible interpretation of a contract affects a lawsuit unrelated to the scope of the product or services provided under that contract.

If this decision goes through, and you've ordered a Waymo through your Google account, and that Waymo car, say, hits you as it's parking - yes, likely the Google account terms of service would be found to apply. Which is insane, but such is a rigidly contractualistic society.

What bad press? Think Disneyland isn't going to be packed again soon?

Do you think the average person even understands the title? People don't care.

It's a children's entertainment company. Most of their customers can't even read.

I agree in principal. Someone with severe enough nut allergies to the point that they'll kill you shouldn't trust any source of food outside your own limited control. The next logical step is restaurants telling patrons they aren't allowed to order if they have food allergies.

Why can't we blame those who prepared the food? In settings such as this, at a company as large as Disney, it's not acceptable for there to be cross contamination of allergens. If it turns out to be a mislabelling of ingredients or some other factor outside the restaurant's control then fair enough but you can't just absolve them of their responsibility claiming it's "the universes fault".

I disagree. Once it's thrown out as an invalid argument, we'll have documented case law indicating that this argument won't be valid and it will reshape the future actions. It's an important step in the process.

It's not normal. It is however possible.

While delayed anaphylaxis is not unusual, it's the wording of this article that is a touch misleading. This article states "later that evening, Tangsuan had an acute allergic reaction in Planet Hollywood".

This gives the impression of some time passing, and that they perhaps went to Planet Hollywood (presumably to eat again).

According to an earlier article this isn't the case. Instead they ate at about 8pm, and by 8:45pm she had the reaction and entered the Planet Hollywood to seek medical assistance, with the ambulance called nearly immediately.

https://wdwnt.com/2024/02/doctor-dies-allergic-reaction-ragl...

Onset is minutes to hours, usually within one or two hours of exposure. "In rare cases, anaphylaxis may be delayed for hours." (source https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anaphylaxis/s...) Additionally: "anaphylactic reactions can also present in a biphasic manner in up to 20% of cases. Even after successful management of the initial presenting symptoms, there can be a recurrence of symptoms peaking 8 to 11 hours after the initial reaction." (source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482124/)

Planet Hollywood right now: http://i.imgur.com/miezzfz.gif

For example, killing someone by ignoring their allergies?

I find it very odd that someone would live in the US for years and have that be their main takeaway.

our legal system was built with the assumptions that there would never be any actively malevolent attorneys representing clients, or actively malevolent judges, assumptions that are clearly very wrong.

and now we have a problem, because until those individuals have a very long, very provable track record of malevolence, there is little that can be done to combat them.

It is important to remember the details here.

Disney dont run the restuarant, they are just the landlord.

The customer didnt pay anything to disney, they just visited a restuarant at a freely open Mall which happened to be owned by disney.

The only reason this person is trying to sue disney is because the disney mall website republished the menu of the restuarant which said 'Allergen Free' on it.

The absurd counter repsonse from disney is just their way of drawing attention to the fact that the original case is just as absurd. Why are they suing Disney when they had nothing to do with the food served, the staff serving it, or even the company that runs the restuarant?

There are a lot of reasons as to why this use of the fine print is unconscionable.

1. There was no consideration in exchange for signing the document. Disney offered a gift and Piccolo effectively chose to return it at the end.

2. The period over which the contract applies would implicitly apply to the period of availability and use of the services.

The following were mentioned in the case:

3. The terms of service were not directly included in the contract

4. The contract was not explicitly signed

5. The terms of use related to the Disney Springs area conflict with and supersede the terms in the Disney+ contract

However, I think the fine print has gotten out of hand generally. We need to have basically standard-form contracts for these things and explicit, aware, negotiated signature required for opting out of the standard terms. The problem is the scale. When a thing costs a nominal amount but requires a contract, and the negotiation of the contract is not worth the time or money for either seller or buyer, then it ought to be agreeable to both in the general case and not have any surprises. Reading through terms of service for just about anything these days makes you really wonder what you might be agreeing to. If you sign up for your smart dryer's service, are you losing the right to seek damages in court if your house burns down? The contract is unlikely to be more than a link with a button above it, or a tiny window in which you can scroll through hundreds of lines of text. What if there's an "agree to defend" clause in there and your smart dryer becomes part of a botnet that steals a bunch of money? Many of these uses would be thrown out for being unconscionable, but it just takes one judge to agree.

It would mean fine prints need to be reasonable, and what does "reasonable" mean will be decided by a judge when needed.

From the plaintiff's response to this motion linked elsewhere, I'm thinking that Disney is somewhat compelled to file this motion in order to have any shot at arbitration being relevant at all. Their initial response to the lawsuit (included in the appendix of that plaintiff's response) is a pretty stock "we don't think we have liability here, it's on the restaurant" response. But the plaintiff response notes an aspect of law where a party willingly participating in a lawsuit without asserting their right to arbitration early is presumed to be waiving that right. So it sounds like Disney must produce some argument early in the proceedings that this should be removed to arbitration in order to preserve that possibility assuming that it is something that would be covered by the arbitration agreements.

I'm not sure I buy how they connect their agreements specifically to transactions in this publicly accessible mall, but it seems like if they didn't make the attempt at all, they couldn't later make the attempt if later in the court process something came to light that indicated this should have been handled with arbitration.

The point of arbitration is to errode the rule of law and attack the state. Surplanting it with "company law" which is not supervised/vetoed indirectly by democratic voting. All other stated goals are lies, often ironically co-evolving to mimic the states already existing more efficient structures.

Disney headquarters should be picketed for this, large scale boycotts etc are the only fair response.

In a sane world, companies who sell products to consumers should be terrified of ever being caught doing something as disgusting as this.

But our actual standards are far lower than we would like to admit.

I would imagine Disney as a corporate consumer of goods and services would also realise it too was at risk of inadvertently agreeing to "egregious" terms if this went ahead: they would not want to incur the cost of even finer grained legals on things they sign to.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the Gander. Or in more modern parlance "no, not like that"

I think that would be fine, I have seen at some Pakistani/Indian restaurants where they apologized and said could not remove the ingredients or prevent cross contamination.

There can be more than one victim. In this case, the claimant suffered a loss of the person who died, which is impossible to quantify, but makes them a victim as well.

Not every death is the result of criminal action. At best, you might find some argument for criminally negligent behavior, but that's going to probably be a pretty big reach for the landlord of a 3rd party restaurant in a mall. Criminal negligence usually requires the accused to have engaged in conduct that they knew (or reasonably should have known) would put someone in danger.

Even if you say that republishing the 3rd party's menu or even collaborating on that menu extends the civil liability to Disney, I'm having a hard time imagining any argument that those actions could be reasonably known to endanger someone without some evidence that the restaurant had no allergen policies or procedures and that Disney knew that and still placed wording to imply they did.

It is unbelievable that we put up with this stupid shit, and it isn't just illegal.

People skim an in person contract, “I just want to make sure I’m not signing my soul away! haha”

But when your spouse clicks agree on the Playstation trial 3 years prior, its all for nothing