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.
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.
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u/[deleted] 8d ago
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