Disney wrongful death lawsuit over allergy highlights danger of fine print | Hacker News Reader

Disney wrongful death lawsuit over allergy highlights danger of fine print

usatoday.com

19 pointsbotanical14 comments

I'm just so baffled by this entire situation. The man's wife had an allergy which the restaurant workers allegedly reassured they can accommodate for, and then they managed to include enough allergens that her epipen did nothing. In response to this, Disney lawyers are arguing the man has no right to a wrongful death suit partly because he signed up for a Disney+ trial on his PlayStation 5 years ago (which included an arbitration clause)

Whatever amount the man is asking for surely can't come close to the reputational harm this situation is causing Disney. Disney's argument also shows being a pirate is the legally safer option here because you never have to accept any arbitration clause!

While of course this being a possibly valid legal argument is completely inane, I must assume Disney is doing this for precedent, not for this one case. They want to be able to use this absurd line of reasoning in any future lawsuit and are afraid they will lose the ability to do so.

I could be wrong, not a legal scholar.

As far as I can tell, the main target in the case is the restaurant. Disney feels they shouldn't be a part of the case because the restaurants are independently owned/run, which is arguable. AFAICT they're pulling this to avoid a legal precedent being set regarding them being liable for any of this.

I just can't see any way a judge goes "yeah this years old free trial agreement also applies here". That's like if I worked in the IT dept at a hospital with an arbitration agreement, then years later after I moved to a different job I was unable to sue a different hospital owned by the same private equity group for malpractice because of that agreement.

> I just can't see any way a judge goes "yeah this years old free trial agreement also applies here". That's like if I worked in the IT dept at a hospital with an arbitration agreement, then years later after I moved to a different job I was unable to sue a different hospital owned by the same private equity group for malpractice because of that agreement.

Don't give 'em any ideas

What's baffling about it? Has Disney ever done something to indicate that they would behave in any other way? If this is your first time encountering the ruthlessness of American megacorporations, then I am truly sorry, but this is what we've incentivized. Lawsuits like this from organizations with more money than God happen every single day, and, more often than not, these companies get away with it.

Truly, this is not at all new behavior from companies like Disney, and it will keep happening as long as we continue to foster a country where this behavior is rewarded and celebrated.

So Disney is "arguing that he agreed to settle any disputes with the entertainment giant and any of its affiliates out of court when he signed up for a free trial of its streaming service Disney+" for a case about "the death of his wife at a restaurant at Walt Disney World".

If this argument is entertained by the courts at all - the likelihood of which the article seems to show varied opinions on - it would be just one more to add to the list of why Megacorporations should not be a thing at all, even if they do not have a monopoly on one particular industry.

The rot runs deep. It is an indictment of our entire society that someone would even be callous enough to make this argument in the first place, let alone for a court to seriously entertain it. By this point, we've already lost.

The jury should award punitive damages based on this tactic alone.

this will backfire on disney spectacularly, but as others have highlighted they probably are cornered into making this argument lest they never be able to make it again. Doesn't make it any less absurd.

The movements of "fuck it, burn it all down" are fed by this river of injustice and its raindrops Can virtue signal all day, but when the chips are down, the message that goes out is "This country needs a hard reset by violent revolution."

Someone dies by incompetence of restaurant workers, management, and the education system. Burn down America.

Disney shouldn’t be in the restaurant business.

They aren't. It's not clear to me why they were named in the lawsuit, I assume because they have deeper pockets than the restaurant.

Or because it was a Disney restaurant. If the venue wasn't Disney's, you'd think they would simply say "this is not our restaurant". And yet they didn't. Why?

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