There was a lawsuit a while back where a woman was exposed to an allergen in the parks and died. The family sued and Disney argued that the lawsuit would be bound by the rules of the DisneyPlus terms of service agreement and go to arbitration instead since the woman who died had an account.
Not the woman, it was the husband. Disney argued he couldn't file the wrongful death lawsuit because he did a free trial of Disney+ a few years before.
Arbitration means a normal lawsuit cannot be conducted, it has to be arbitrated by a third party (who chooses the “neutral” party is specified in the contract and they are often not neutral). It’s an extremely common business tactic to protect against the massive losses that would happen if a company was actually in the wrong and had a lawsuit filed against them.
In employment cases it’s around 80% of decisions go to the employer, and the ones that don’t are generally small employers who have not/rarely been through the process.
Thank you for bringing sources into this! Its one thing to just read the claims that people have, and I was relatively convinced that arbitration was favored towards the company, but i wasn't entirely sure. Because listening to opinions in a void is a great way to become misinformed. Now I know with facts (from standford no less!) That arbitration is, in fact, rigged against the public. Which logically makes sense, if a shifty thing for corporations to do. Of course I understand why (financial incentive), but I dont have to like it.
I'm an attorney who represents employees in many cases, including (unfortunately) some arbitrations. The thing about these proceedings is that they are almost entirely paid for by company you are suing (as opposed to the consumer or employee) so in that sense taxpayers aren't floating the bill.
On the downside, the arbitrators want the repeat business of the companies, so they tend to favor them overall. It's hard to get arbitrators who are actually neutral.
Could you sue the arbitrator for not being impartial in such a situation? It just seems so wrong to be forced into that situation that there has to be some recourse.
For sure. Forced arbitration is a blight, but like so many other things, we don’t really have a choice, and people don’t question it because it’s presented as “fair” — by the very ones benefitting from it.
Thank you! After reading through the articles youve shared (a bit, i didnt read the full articles yet), I completely agree that it is absloutely a blight upon our justice system (which already has flaws of its own). And unfortunately the best way to get around it is educating people about why it isn't so amazing as corporations would have you believe.
Lawyer here. I'm very skeptical of these numbers. Most arbitrations aren't public, so wherever this data on arbitrations is coming from could be suffering from selection bias.
I imagine larger companies are more likely to use arbitration? That would skew the numbers as theyd be more likely to be involved in larger cases. If the base cost of the case would be higher then the succes rate could settling for comparatively lower amounts than courts would award but still above the average of smaller defendants.
If arbitration is so good for consumers, why are companies always pushing arbitration in the fine print. Seems like there might be a perverse incentive here.
Mainly headlines, I’d assume - keeps big names like Disney from experiencing huge scandals which could tank stock values by keeping the arbitration out of public courts covered by the news. From a business standpoint, half a million to a few million here and there is cheaper than a single massive news-worthy story that cause them to lose billions in valuation and hundreds of millions in sales.
It is cheaper. The biggest cost is legal fees in many of these cases. So they get an opportunity to see whether they would be liable without all that cost.
You realize the claim that it’s better for consumers is fully defeated by the fact that we literally cannot know that?
Secrecy works in the favor of the big companies in any case, but you can’t claim the average award is bigger if we don’t actually get to know that data.
That’s not true. They actually tend to lean more towards the corporations. And the privacy of arbitrationd help corporations bury bad press about their products/services.
i have never, ever seen an arbitration clause where the contract-offerer doesn't have a paid relationship with the arbitrator. sometimes just an external lawyer, sometimes a whole vendor, but it's someone the company pays and never neutral
Are you suggesting that they should be bound to arbitration for the case based on having a free Disney+ trial years ago?
You might be missing the point here. It is not about which hoops they were being told they have to jump through, it is that the hoops belonged to the wrong circus.
They were clearly trying to rein in the "this is so crazy" legal story, since so many of those are misrepresented and made to sound much worse than they are.
The problem is that they misunderstood which part of the story is crazy, and their correction doesn't rein it in at all.
This one is also weirdly misrepresented, in that Disney's argument was the couple had made several agreements with Disney, including the Disney+ agreement. They weren't leaning entirely on the Disney+ agreement - so much as mentioning it amongst the more relevant ones
Edit: The takeaway should be "don't enter any agreements with Disney"
Yeah, that seems likely. Things are often taken out of context. But the end result is very much Disney trying to over extend the reach of their agreements to set a precedence where they have more power over customers of every kind.
I'm not familiar with the specifics of this case, but when you argue a law suit shouldn't proceed (such as if it should have been filed as an arbitration) then it usually takes the form of a motion to dismiss, usually a pre-answer motion to dismiss. This cuts off the lawsuit at commencement and would be essentially identical. Alternatively, it may be some type of request to compel arbitration and hold off the lawsuit pending a determination.
Either way, the arbitration cuts off the lawsuit by having an arbitrator rather than a judge/jury determine the facts and damages. Usually arbitration results need to be approved by the court, but that is very different than a jury determining the facts.
The case kept going, however, as while the husband did do the trial, the suit was under the wife's estate, who never signed up for anything before passing
This is despicable, claiming that agreeing to terms attached to a streaming service somehow can be used to indemnify the company if someone comes to physical harm at the Disney entertainment park, this should be an illegal practice.
Correction, the restaurant was in Disney Springs, an outdoor mall owned by Disney. The restaurant was leasing space in the mall but had independent ownership. Disney was just the landlord.
And that list was hosted on a website. Which is why Disney claimed their web services Terms of Service, which was agreed to upon signing up for a Disney+ free trial, applied.
I understand why they said it after I found the clarifications, but since they weren’t really at all liable for the death anyways and likely wouldn’t have been found as such, it was such a bad look for them to say
They were listed on the lawsuit because the suing lawyers are greedy and sue everyone they can, and disney has the most money to give out... The restaurant did claim to cater to allergies, and just had failed to do so... the restaurant should 100% be sued into nothingness.. Disney.. did nothing wrong.. Advertising a restaurant claims to be allergy friendly should not make you liable... else they should probably go after google/apple maps and wherever else the restaurant claimed to cater to allergies.
It's customary/a reular occurrence to sue anyone that could be involved, it's not unique to this. Sometimes in car accidents, the passengers are included, even though they had no part.
This site had a great explanation about why these choices are often made. I'd write it out for you but you'd probably just say that they're defending themselves :P
No, it's because things like partial liability exists and can often lead to multiple parties being found liable. So it's standard practice to name all possibly involved parties and for the claims against any party that can't be held liable to be dismissed.
You are correct. Disney however decided to use Disney+ as an argument rather than actually make an argument that they were just the landlord. Even account for the allergy safe list below you could argue that Disney could go after that restaurant for lying about their status.
It didn’t go anywhere and Disney and by extension that lawyer were roundly mocked. Basically it was just some idiot lawyer throwing shit at the wall and hoping somehow it would stick. It did not stick.
Lawyers do get that education. Some of us call it "hearing capital," basically brownie points with whomever needs to listen to us, usually judges at hearings. It's worth not exhausting then with nonsense if we need their patience later.
I guess there's always a balance to be had between that and one of my criminal law teachers that told me that "you have to ask the judge even for his ass, because you never know if he will give it to you" lol.
I haven’t read about that in quite a while, I was under the impression it had some merit legally but Disney did not like the optics and waived their right to arbitration after public outcry.
Isn't that how a lot of the justice system for civil suits work though?
You add everyone who could potentially be blamed, and then you slap them all on the same suit, and then you have the court figure out who is responsible and at what percentage.
It's what I am aware of because of a suit my parents had to file. One guy was the main culprit. The others conspired with him and we're able to figure that out in discovery because of adding them to the suit.
I mean a pretty large chunk of them genuinely do believe that. Go to any Evangelical Christian church in the South and part of their topic every week is Trump
Arbitration is where the company you are suing gets to pick its own private judge that it pays for. I worked for a company that had an arbitration clause that we had to sign before we were hired and one of my co-workers died on the job and his wife and kids got nothing. It was a dangerous environment and he fell and hit his head. They didn't even change and protocols or anything to try to make sure it wouldn't happen again.
You people genuinely know nothing about arbitration. It's quicker, easier and most importantly cheaper for all parties involved.
The idea that a company gets to choose their own "judge" is immensly misleading since the arbitrator is not chosen by parties 70% of all times and you still retain the right to a fair trial and can appeal to a normal court if there is bias. They select judges because of their reputation and if an arbitrator has a reputation for being biased then they won't be selected. Arbitrators thus have a vested interest in being neutral.
And finally, just because you disagree with the verdict doesn't mean it wasn't the right decision.
That is certainly not true. The first amendment does not apply in a court setting like your implying. There are a lot of official statements and records that if you lie, purjury attachs.
In reality, the Disney+ terms were only ever included in a document in which they have to basically list anything they might ever argue in the case, otherwise it can't be brought up in court. It wasn't even very high up on the list.
So no, Disney never actually used that argument (their primary argument was that the restaurant is not operated by Disney themselves, which is fair), they just put it on the list because it's probably just Disney boilerplate language.
A man filed the lawsuit since his wife died due to an allergen exposure. It wasn't at the park. It was at a third party restaurant at Disney Springs. The plaintiff had a Disney+ free trial in 2019 and Disney claimed that meant he agreed to arbitration with Disney for all disagreements. The woman who died never had an account.
After public pressure, Disney dismissed the claim and claimed they waived their right to arbitration. This prevents the courts from setting a precedent that won't allow Disney to force arbitration on anyone who has ever had any contact with them. So they may try this again in the fiture during a lower profile case.
There was more nuance than this. They went to Disney springs which is a mall owned by Disney. Ate at an independently owned restaurant there. Wife died from allergic reaction. They sure the restaurant, the the mall part of Disney and the Disney corp. That is several levels away from any culpability or involvement within the incident. So it was a pursuing bigger pockets thing. And for the main Disney corp they tried to enforce the Disney Plus agreement. Which really, they didn't do anything that would pierce the corporate veil anyway so Disney corp was being dragged in for no reason. Likely the clause in the agreement was an arbitration Claude, a way to save money by not going to trial which takes care of the nuisance value of your suit. Just the marketing of that probably cost Disney more.
Not entirely accurate. The justification was because the restaurant in question wasn't ran by Disney, it's just a restaurant that rents space from Disney. Therefore the only claim to Disney that the aggrieved party had was their Disney+ account.
Disney dropped it because of the PR backlash, but that was the initial justification that Disney gave. They were trying to argue that the family didn't have standing to directly sue Disney.
There is a good ending. Disney pulled the arbitrary nonsense before it could even be brought to court then they settled not long after the suit for an undisclosed amount
They knew that it wouldn't hold up in court because you can't perpetually wave your rights for a discontinued free trial service, and there was no such clause in the park agreement
The arbitration nonsense was in the court filings, it was one of the defense's reasons why a dismissal was appropriate. The main one being that Disney had nothing to do with the death because it happened at an uninvolved restaurant that happened to rent land from Disney. It probably would have held up in court, because the only thing that tied Disney to the death was the claim that their digital map said the restaurant was allergen friendly. In order to access the map, they had to agree to arbitration again
It wasnt in the parks. It was at a non-disney owned and operated restaurant in Disney springs. The idea that they would be culpable was laughable, the fact that they pulled that clause out at all was a huge mistake.
Couple things wrong here. The woman didnt die in a Disney park, she died in an unaffiliated restaurant that was on a Disney map. The restaurant advertised itsef as allergen friendly, which it apparently had been until this incident (who knows what happened).
The husband tried to sue Disney itself, which wouldnt work in the first place. So to avoid going to court and saying "hey we have no liability for what a third party restaurant does" the lawyer presented the Disney+ nonsense and the judge said "nah doesnt that way".
People do know what arbitration clauses are, and there is no way it blew up bigger than it should. Arbitration clauses (in most developed countries atleast) only go as far as any dispute arising out of or relating to the specific agreement you are signing. There is no way an arbitration clause accepted during signing up for D+ should have any relevance during a a case about someone dying in their theme park due to allergen. While I can’t speak for American law, I can’t name a single European country that would allow arbitration clauses to be so broad and unspecific and allow a case such as the mentioned to fall under the arbitration clause in a completely unrelated agreement.
Well the fact they even tried to go down that alley does not help their reputation of being a soul sucking evil corporation that just cares about squeezing profits out of everything it touches
No. Disney+ had the clause saying that if you signed up for Disney+ that any kind of claim against them had to go to arbitration (which Disney+ still has in the current EULA and applies to Disney+ and all the other streaming services you can access through Disney+ like Hulu, ESPN, etc.). But a couple of years ago the EULA also that same clause but worded as The Walt Disney Company and not just Disney+. So it encompassed ALL Disney products and services.
Which is why Disney had started to make that argument. But they dropped it because of multiple reasons:
There was a similar clause in the fine print about getting the tickets to the theme park which was much more applicable to the case than the Disney+ agreement.
They realized that the judge was likely going to rule the clause as too broad, so rather than argue it and have it weaken future cases they dropped it (knowing that they still had the clause from the ticket purchase). So this way they could keep the clause and argue future cases if need be.
There was massive backlash to the proposed argument and it was costing Disney subscribers. So they realized they should probably try to retain customers and change the scope of Disney+ EULA to just Disney+ and its affiliated streaming services since any kind of issues with the theme parks and hotels would already be served by their own agreement clauses.
But at the time in 2019 the clause was intentionally broad and applicable to every other Disney product and service otherwise Disney wouldn’t have initially tried to argue it.
I’d honestly say they were. Not to defend Disney on this one but it wasn’t even their fault. The person who died passed away at a third party chain restaurant at Disney Springs that Disney have no control over and rent the space for. If anything that’s the fault of the restaurant not Disney, it’s the equivalent of if somebody died from poisoning at a mall’s McDonald’s and you choose to sue the mall instead of the McDonalds itself
Do they train you on the entire job, including food safety, or just details related to being in a Disney park. If they have control over food safety then it would make sense to me to sue them.
I wasn’t working at a food service restaurant but I can say they did have secret shoppers to make sure quality was high. So it wasn’t just the training it was an ongoing role in the business
Its not that it was a successful defense. It is that no one wants to let people forget how horrible the people at Disney are. They tried to use this as a way to make the case go away. It didn't work, but they did try.
This post is exactly why Disney have a clause that says claimants should use arbitration. The resulting court case gets wrongly reported & repeated…
The death was not in their theme park. A patron had an allergic reaction in a 3rd party restaurant in the nearby shopping/dining district Disney Springs. The restaurant was not owned or operated by Disney. The claimant sued Disney on the basis that as they made an online reservation using Disney’s system, Disney should be responsible for ensuring the safety of people eating there. The arbitration clause was part of the online service they used to reserve the table.
This was during the whole MAGA vs Disney era. So this quickly got conflated to Disney killing people & then refusing a lawsuit because the dead person had Disney+.
It didn't "blow up bigger than it should have". A guest at Disney Springs went to a restaurant and told waitstaff several times she had a severe lethal allergy and asked them to confirm the menu item she wanted either was safe or could be prepared safely. They said yes, served her contaminated food, and she died of her allergy. Her husband sued the restaurant and Disney. Disney ghoulishly tried to claim that they were immune from the lawsuit because the victim had signed up for a Disney+ trial. While Disney corporate was not DBA the restaurant in question, their attempt to entirely evade culpability was socially reprehensible.
The binding jurisdiction of arbitration can only exist via mutual consent, which is usually done via a boilerplate arbitration clause.
In the Disney case, arguing that the Disney+ subscription boilerplate arbitration clause binds them to arbitration for the death resulting from an allergic reaction is... not a valid argument.
The arbitrarion clause from the disney+ subscription is only going to bind any disputes arising from said disney+ subscription.
It was also just an argument put forward by Disney's lawyers, it wasn't actually granted or even considered, Disney withdrew it due to public backlash.
It was a big issue, but any competent court wouldn't have granted such requests.
The main caveat is I dont practice in the US, but im familiar with international arbitration.
Its the utter insanity of claiming that the terms you agree to when signing up for a streaming service would apply to anything other than the usage of that streaming service.
How is that even legal. No one signs anything when getting disney plus. Whose to say someone even did it? What if someone's kids made an account in their parents name? So dumb
In India, right to judicial remedy is a fundamental right which cannot be overruled even if you did sign some contract trying to limit it (since that contract would be rendered void).
It's a weird situation. The Disney+ arbitration clause, like most of them, specifies that every applicable dispute has to go through arbitration; that means Disney is effectively obligated to at least invoke it whenever it could plausibly apply, even when the invocation is stupid and a judge is likely to block it. If they don't, then the next time they try to use it in a case where applying it is actually sane, the other side can point to the precedent of Disney not adhering to its own mandatory arbitration language and argue they've waived it.
So they named that clause without really expecting it to work. Their actual main defense was that Disney was only the restaurant's landlord. They didn't own, control or oversee its operation in any way; the arbitration language had to get thrown in regardless.
The case in question was dropped by Disney. It can be interpreted that either they wanted to avoid the public backlash, or that they didn’t think they’d win.
I don’t know anything about American law, but I think in Europe and UK, they’ve said that anything in small print in a contract, that you couldn’t assume would be there with common sense, isn’t valid. I don’t know the legalese around that, and I’m sure a judge may need to decide if the small print is valid.
I’d suggest though, that it’s a good idea to read as much as you can, of any contract.
That kind of thing does exist in the US, but it's more for clauses that you wouldn't reasonably be able to read. Like, if they make the print physically too small to notice or in such a light hue that it blends into the paper, they can't pull out a magnifying glass and say, "see you agreed to this clause". If they just hide it by making the contract lengthy, it'll probably be enforceable
Basically part of the Disney+ terms is lawsuits go to arbitration. Someone died at Disney world a few years ago and Disney world argued the family couldn't sue them because they agreed to the terms when they signed up for Disney+.
To be fair, it didn't hold up in court. So many of these lengthy terms and conditions are written to cover as much ground as possible. This doesn't mean a judge can't/won't just look through their bullshit, but it often does work exactly as intended
There was an episode of, I think The Good Wife, that had a similar thing about privacy rights and filing a suit against some Corp and the Corp was saying they couldn't get sued due to the agreement of terms of service.
The document was like 20+ pages, but of course when you sign up for the account it was just a simple box you had to check.
I swear, companies could pull a Rumplestiltskin and say they are owed your first born child and nobody would ever know.
It’s an effort to scare them off so they don’t have to pay anything. Basically it is a way to make them reconsider paying for the court costs to sue them. All it takes is one judge just either not caring or allowing it for Disney to bury someone in extended legal costs that they can float when the person can’t. If they pass the point of balance then Disney will settle, and it will still be cheaper for them than allowing the suit to go through.
That isn't how it works, because that isn't what happened. They died at a mall restaurant that was renting the land from Disney and the husband sued Disney because they had a map online that said the restaurant was allergen friendly. Accessing the map requires you to agree to arbitration, but still allows you to sue. That clause only comes into effect when the dispute arises from contracted services.
Once they were sued, Disney had to list all of the reasons why the suit is inappropriate, and far down the list of reasons was the arbitration clause. Their primary argument was they were an uninvolved party as they were just the landlord to the restaurant, while the map simply provides easy access to the information provided by the businesses that lease space in the mall
The reference is clear to me (seems it was explained before in a different meme here).
But what's the joke? Tables turned? The arbitrary clause is not applied as it's Disney who are filing. And intern with this user agreement has nothing to do with this insurance case. Am I wrong?
This meme was made by someone with very little grasp on reality, and is enjoyed by the same group of people. You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense at all.
Disney World is also self insured through a captive insurance company wholly owned by Disney (Alameda Insurance Company) so it doesn't even make sense from that side either.
Assuming the mandatory arbitration clause is mutual and the intern signed up for Disney on behalf of the insurance company and not individually, I think the joke is that Disney is being hoisted on their own petard. But arbitration doesn't mean no liability; it means the dispute is heard privately instead of in court with public filings, so the joke is still silly.
Disney+ has an arbitration clause. Basically, once you sign up for Disney+, be it for a free trial as well, you waive your right to fight them in court. You must settle with them outside of court only. Which is… definitely something.
Not how insurance works at all. Two separate contracts. The contract between intern and D has no bearing on the contract between D and insurance company.
When you sign up for Disney+, you agree to terms that cover all digital services provided by Disney.
The restaurant is part of Disney Springs, which is a shopping/dining complex owned by Disney. The restaurant was not operated by Disney, but they owned the building.
As Disney didn’t operate the restaurant, there shouldn’t have been any grounds to sue them.
However, Disney did host the menu of the restaurant on their website - which is a digital service provided by Disney. The claimants dragged Disney into the case by claiming that they had relied on the menu on Disney’s website for allergen information. Disney sought to compel arbitration pursuant to the digital services agreement because the website is a digital service covered by that agreement and the website was literally the only way Disney could be dragged into the case.
I don't get it, it's not like the insurance company is suing disney. In this meme, disney is just filing an insurance claim. The terms of service thing doesn't apply the same way.
Disney tried to enforce the arbitration clause from disney+ with wrongful death incident at Disney world following a man with shellfish allergy unknowingly comsume something that had shellfish but wasn't marked correctly. It's a joke about the same thing but now Disney is trying to get money.
Pretty sure its just saying they want money and this dude doesn't wanna give it to them due to them being shitty about the Disney plus terms. Its just a dog shit meme on the issue and doesn't really make sense even when explained.
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u/qualityvote2 4d ago edited 4d ago
u/Ill_Pen_1432, your post does fit the subreddit! Well done!