Poll of the Day > According to Disney if you ever used Disney+ you can't sue them for anything.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://deadline.com/2024/08/disney-uses-streaming-terms-block-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-florida-resort-1236042926/

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/new-york-doctor-died-from-food-allergy-at-disney-world-company-says-it-cannot-be-sued-due-to-terms-and-conditions-101723840179886.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/16/politics/arbitration-signing-away-rights-disney-plus-wrongful-death-lawsuit/index.html

Husband sues Disney in a case that alleges his wife died of an allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant in Disney World after they repeatedly asked the staff if the food was free of dairy and nuts and were assured the food was allergen free.

Disney responded by saying because the husband agreed to the ToS of the Disney+ free trail in 2019 he can't sue Disney for anything ever.

This is for a $50,000 lawsuit.

I can't imagine this is actually going to survive the challenges it will obviously be facing.

I'm amazed Disney is willing to take the bad PR hit over $50k which should be a negligible amount of money for a company like theirs. Surprised they didn't simply settle that OOC to keep it out of the press

The incident occured on Disney owned land but not a restaurant owned or staffed by Disney employees.

Yeah, that is pretty surprising. It's a cut-and-dry suit: the restaurant was informed of the allergies, made a very explicit, unambiguous commitment to avoid them, then served her stuff they knew she was allergic to, causing her death. If they need to pass the buck further down the chain to make those who were more directly responsible pay for their negligence and recover what they pay to the dude, they've got avenues to do that, so it's not even like they'll never see that $50k again (which is pocket change to Disney anyway).

Instead, they've chosen to announce to the world in no uncertain terms that anyone who consumes any Disney product or service cannot hold Disney legally responsible for any harm they or their employees cause to them. Like, forget bad PR in the sense of people just not liking the company, this is actively and directly telling people to avoid buying their stuff by attaching a threat to that transaction.

argonautweakend posted...

The incident occured on Disney owned land but not a restaurant owned or staffed by Disney employees.

Which is an easy defense: "We are not responsible for the actions of these independent contractors, you need to go sue them instead." This approach of "you're not allowed to sue us because you bought our stuff" is just completely unhinged, even more so when such a simple alternative exists.

adjl posted...

Which is an easy defense: "We are not responsible for the actions of these independent contractors, you need to go sue them instead." This approach of "you're not allowed to sue us because you bought our stuff" is just completely unhinged, even more so when such a simple alternative exists.

Yeah, which is honestly what I expected them to do, this defense is bonkers.

I just hope the judge sanctions them for that stupidity.

I recently saw this on YouTube. Crazy shit

This is kinda how a lot of legal documents are written.
They apply a billion different things, and with one or two arguments that are legit (in this case I think they're claiming that it's not technically a disney restaurant, just a restaurant at disney).
Then the other side says to the judge that they should be dismissed.
This argument is likely going to be dismissed.

My understanding was that they were trying to cite the Disney+ Terms of Service to force the case to go straight to arbitration without even making it into court (the ToS includes a line agreeing to handle disputes with Disney through arbitration and not court), not just that they've brought this argument forth in court.

Of course, on the flip side, the dude's lawyer has argued that he's representing the deceased's estate, and the deceased's estate has not agreed to those terms at any point and that they therefore do not apply. Law is weird.

adjl posted...

My understanding was that they were trying to cite the Disney+ Terms of Service to force the case to go straight to arbitration without even making it into court (the ToS includes a line agreeing to handle disputes with Disney through arbitration and not court), not just that they've brought this argument forth in court.

Of course, on the flip side, the dude's lawyer has argued that he's representing the deceased's estate, and the deceased's estate has not agreed to those terms at any point and that they therefore do not apply. Law is weird.

Yeah that's basically the default to every law case I've seen.

rjsilverthorn posted...

Yeah, which is honestly what I expected them to do, this defense is bonkers.

Yep they are needlessly digging their own grave for some reason when they never even needed to

I heard about this crazy story, this will be embarrassing for them.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/80b3bbab.jpg

Its being reported that Disney is waiving its arbitration and letting this go to suit. Lol they saw the way the internet reacted.

shadowsword87 posted...

Yeah that's basically the default to every law case I've seen.

And I get that, to a certain extent, you kind of just have to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. The law is complicated, there are a lot of loopholes and cracks you can slip through if you can find them, and getting off on technicalities isn't at all uncommon. But this? Even if this let them win the suit, even suggesting this defense is going to be a significant PR hit and probably cost them more than $50k as people respond exactly as you'd expect them to respond to "if you buy our products we're allowed to kill you."

This should have been pretty straightforward, especially where Disney doesn't even own the restaurant and can therefore avoid responsibility on those grounds. It was entirely in Disney's best interests to just settle this quietly out of court, then maybe sue the restaurant themselves for the amount paid and the damage to their image. Instead, they went full-on dystopian and are having to walk that back. Maybe this is some 4D chess nonsense that they're going to use to run the restaurant in question out of business by blaming the restaurant for the broader damages to their image, but at face value, it certainly looks like it was just really stupid.

It's kind of shocking how evil of a company Disney actually is. Like you don't expect it. They probably aren't up there with Nestle, but Disney is quite evil.

adjl posted...

And I get that, to a certain extent, you kind of just have to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. The law is complicated, there are a lot of loopholes and cracks you can slip through if you can find them, and getting off on technicalities isn't at all uncommon. But this? Even if this let them win the suit, even suggesting this defense is going to be a significant PR hit and probably cost them more than $50k as people respond exactly as you'd expect them to respond to "if you buy our products we're allowed to kill you."

This should have been pretty straightforward, especially where Disney doesn't even own the restaurant and can therefore avoid responsibility on those grounds. It was entirely in Disney's best interests to just settle this quietly out of court, then maybe sue the restaurant themselves for the amount paid and the damage to their image. Instead, they went full-on dystopian and are having to walk that back. Maybe this is some 4D chess nonsense that they're going to use to run the restaurant in question out of business by blaming the restaurant for the broader damages to their image, but at face value, it certainly looks like it was just really stupid.

Yeah, this is a PR hell, I honestly just don't know how often Disney gets sued for wrongful deaths. Part of me suspects they're sued constantly, and this just happened to catch wind.
I know they've got the funny policy of "nobody's allowed to die at Disney World", so that could have been it too.

Given the size of Disneyworld/land and the number that exist worldwide, I imagine they face quite a few such suits. No matter how careful you are, if you're seeing hundreds of millions of visitors a year, you're going to have one of them die every now and again, and some of those deaths will be due to errors for which Disney is responsible. That's just the nature of working on a scale like that.

Far-Queue posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/80b3bbab.jpg

I'd say it justifies an armed revolution.

I'm not familiar with the legalese, but I thought there was a precedent that made clauses unenforceable when you state "you can't sue us for anything for any reason". And I've also read that you can't enforce any clause that any reasonable person would never agree to if they were aware of it. So if Disney said they owned your first born because you used Disney Plus, that wouldn't hold up in court because that's not something any reasonable person would ever agree to. I don't know if that applies to this case in particular, but it should.

VideoboysaysCube posted...

I'm not familiar with the legalese, but I thought there was a precedent that made clauses unenforceable when you state "you can't sue us for anything for any reason". And I've also read that you can't enforce any clause that any reasonable person would never agree to if they were aware of it. So if Disney said they owned your first born because you used Disney Plus, that wouldn't hold up in court because that's not something any reasonable person would ever agree to. I don't know if that applies to this case in particular, but it should.

Yes it would have been thrown out by the judge, and already has been redacted from the PR backlash.

They get more assholish every year. The argument about using the streaming service doesn't make any sense at all. I hope disney loses this one.

Well, they've now backtracked and have withdrawn the argument that it should go to arbitration.

Notably, the message from the CEO didn't say that the legal argument was wrong or invalid, just that they're "waiving their right to arbitration out of respect for the deceased".

TwentyBatmans posted...

husband just killed her I bet and is trying to blame the theme park he planned this its obvious

What a stupid thing to fucking say.

VideoboysaysCube posted...

I'm not familiar with the legalese, but I thought there was a precedent that made clauses unenforceable when you state "you can't sue us for anything for any reason". And I've also read that you can't enforce any clause that any reasonable person would never agree to if they were aware of it. So if Disney said they owned your first born because you used Disney Plus, that wouldn't hold up in court because that's not something any reasonable person would ever agree to. I don't know if that applies to this case in particular, but it should.

As I understand, the clause in the D+ ToS is fairly typical, mostly amounting to "if you have a problem with this service we've got our own resolution system in place and you agree to go through that instead of suing us." That covers things like subscribers getting mad at them for failing to keep children away from objectionable content, or getting charged because they forgot to cancel their free trials, or feeling like they were overcharged because they missed a price increase... things that somebody might try to sue them over, but which most people would agree are reasonable to settle out of court because the stakes aren't high enough to bother paying for legal fees.

To try and apply it this broadly, though, is utterly ludicrous, especially where it was a free trial and not even a paid subscription (though it would still be utterly ludicrous even if it were). Best case scenario, the judge throws out the defense for being stupid, but if this ended up getting enough traction in court it might result in clauses like this becoming explicitly illegal as written, forcing everyone using one to specify the scope of it or establishing precedent that limits the scope for them.

darkknight109 posted...

Notably, the message from the CEO didn't say that the legal argument was wrong or invalid, just that they're "waiving their right to arbitration out of respect for the deceased".

Presumably, that's to avoid saying anything that could possibly be construed as waiving their right to arbitration in any other scenario. So long as they act like this is a special favour and not something anyone's entitled to, they retain their full ability to wield this clause however they see fit in the future, though somehow I doubt this particular application is ever going to come up again.