UPDATE (Aug. 20, 12:53 p.m.): Disney is now dropping its bid to keep a wrongful death lawsuit out of court based on the plaintiff having signed up for its streaming service, with the company saying that it strives “to put humanity above all other considerations.”
Not many people read all (or any) of the fine print when they sign up for a Disney+ account (or any account, for that matter). Perhaps even fewer people would think that such a routine action would block their subsequent wrongful death lawsuit on their spouse’s behalf from being heard in court.
Yet that’s essentially what Walt Disney Parks and Resorts lawyers have argued in their push to force such a case into arbitration. They raised the claim in response to the wrongful death suit in Florida state court from Jeffrey Piccolo, who said that his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, died from an allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at Disney Springs at Walt Disney World.
Disney’s lawyers argued that the matter should go to arbitration, citing terms they said Piccolo agreed to in creating a Disney+ account and in using a Disney website to purchase tickets to Epcot.
In a lengthy court filing this month, Piccolo’s lawyer disagreed with Disney’s stance, calling it “preposterous” that Piccolo somehow bound the then-nonexistent estate of his wife “to an arbitration agreement buried within certain terms and conditions.”
The implications of the company’s position, he went on, are that: any person who signs up for a Disney account, even free trials that are not extended beyond the trial period, will have forever waived the right to a jury trial enjoyed by them and any future Estate to which they are associated, and will instead have agreed (on behalf of other survivors and the estate itself) to arbitrate any and all disputes against any and all Disney entities and affiliates, no matter how far removed from use of the Disney streaming service, including personal injury and wrongful death claims.
He argued that logic “borders on the surreal.” It’s difficult to disagree, though the law can take on a surrealistic quality when someone is suing a large company. Whether this case remains surreal will become more apparent after a court hearing previously set for Oct. 2. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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