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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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).

Basically within the scope of the legal rules the system is a prisoners dilemma with respect to honesty. If the defense is completely honest but the prosecution isn’t, then an innocent man may go to jail, and vice versa.

The system has no way to enforce honesty, so it is set up in a way that honesty isn’t required. In a system where honesty isn’t required, being honest is basically illogical.

If we want that to change we need a way to detect and enforce honesty in a trial system. I think that is an impossible goal.

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 here's my counterargument: if I buy someone a ticket to a concert, then are they bound to the terms I agreed, including in relation to harm to them caused by (alleged) supplier negligence? I'd argue that they have a claim in tort, not contract, and therefore the terms of my contract with the supplier are not relevant.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

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

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?

Sounds like someone should let them know. ;)

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.