I’m guessing that the legal team didn’t have a case, but corporate told them to fight it anyways, so some legal intern just threw some wild shit at the wall and the more senior layers were like “well, we got nothing else. If corporate wants us to fight it, this is all we got”
I honestly don’t think they hear ANY liability at all. This would be like saying your friend’s landlord is at fault for your friend feeding you allergens because the landlord introduced you to each other. Like, sure, they’re related, but by no stretch of the meaning of “obviously at fault”. That’s just ridiculous.
If they didn’t, they would have made a motion to dismiss because they bear no liability. They have an army of top tier lawyers, if they decided arguing something other than not having liability, that tells me they do, or, at very least, it would be hard to convince a court they don’t.
Not everything is all or nothing. It’s not that you either are completely liable or not liable at all. That’s not how this works. If you are not liable at all, you should move to dismiss. The way this case was designed, based on the allegations, Disney does bear responsibility. But the allegations only include Disney in the most tenuous of ways. So a motion to dismiss would NOT have worked. But IMO, they are not liable at all. This was a restaurant that leased Disney land that screwed up. I can’t see how Disney had anything to do with this at all.
If they only bore a small liability, they would have just had their legal team reseach what the person suing would most likely get, then provide that information, and an offer based on that information, before doing anything else. You know, like what normally happens when a company gets sued. The fact that they went straight to some hail mary strategy tells me they believe they are on the hook for big money, or will have a hard time proving they aren’t.
Some junior unpaid intern was tasked with reading all their agreements to see if there was anything they could use. They pitched this and the rest was history
😊 Well, you might think so, but if that were true then their legal team would have to be unimaginably inept. Even small companies rely on arbitration clauses. A company the size of Disney probably has boilerplate arbitration clauses prolifically spread throughout any agreement they make. I don’t imagine there’s anything their legal team says more often when they are named in a suit than, “can we arbitrate?”
So, yes they were relying on a remote technicality to get out of the suit, but that’s also the only reason they were named in the suit. I don’t blame them. And they know they wouldn’t be found liable. But they also know that people only remember “the mcdonalds hot coffee lawsuit” being about some unintelligent gold digging woman (which BTW is a travesty). So the settlement that they will likely offer is going to be worth far less than the damage from the bad rep of a trial like this.
I’m guessing the legal department had been looking for a test case to see how far they could take the forced arbitration clause in the Disney+ ToS, but they didn’t consult the PR department as to whether this would be a good idea.
I’m kind of horrified that someone not only didn’t run that idea by PR, but couldn’t piece together using their own common sense that loudly declaring “Our company is allowed to straight up murder you because Mickey Mouse is bigger than God, and we’re not even kidding!” was not exactly going to fly with…
Neither happened. The restaurant isn’t owned by Disney, it is just listed on their website as a recommended place for allergy free dining, and they while own the property, it isn’t a part of the actual park, springs, etc. The family signed up for D+, and therefore “read” the terms, including the arbitration, and then used their D+ account to sign up for the trip, and had to “read” the terms again. The whole D+ argument wasn’t that they had to go to arbitration because they used the streaming, it was to show they had to go through the same terms multiple times and should be familiar with them. Agreements requiring arbitration are indeed bullshit and should be more limited, but this is proper enforcement of a shotty system, not the batshit insane enforcement it has been memed into.
They are going after the restaurant. The restaurant is whom they are suing. But they know they won’t get much from an allergy lawsuit settlement with an Irish Pub themed restaurant, so they included the deeper-pocket Disney in the suit (which IMO is a less than honorable act, but in a capitalist society I’m always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the person, also you never know if the legal system is going to choose you to fuck with so I dually recognize the spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to damage remuneration).
Even with that said though, since the guy who decided to risk a life-threatening condition on whether a likely not much more than minimum wage employee could or would know if a thing was allergen free decided to rely on a technicality of civil litigation to get more money, then I can’t fault Disney for using a technicality to try to get out of it.
Fuck Disney in general, but kudos to Disney for taking this on the chin just to not make someone even a perceived victim of their greed. I think it’s honestly respectable. They’re still probably not going to be at fault were it to go to trial, but they’re going to settle and give this guy the obvious payday he wanted.
Yeah, my understanding is that SOP is to sue everyone even remotely, possibly, responsible, and the courts will work out who is and isn’t likely enough to have to actually defend themselves. This is just a part of the dance.
I don’t know which of these two situations happened
Someone incredibly and insanely out of touch was watching The Boys and thought Vought was a guideline for how a good business operates
Someone on a power trip wanted to try to legalize murder for his brand
I’m not sure which scenario scares me more, the incompetence or the evil.
I’m guessing that the legal team didn’t have a case, but corporate told them to fight it anyways, so some legal intern just threw some wild shit at the wall and the more senior layers were like “well, we got nothing else. If corporate wants us to fight it, this is all we got”
I honestly don’t think they hear ANY liability at all. This would be like saying your friend’s landlord is at fault for your friend feeding you allergens because the landlord introduced you to each other. Like, sure, they’re related, but by no stretch of the meaning of “obviously at fault”. That’s just ridiculous.
If they didn’t, they would have made a motion to dismiss because they bear no liability. They have an army of top tier lawyers, if they decided arguing something other than not having liability, that tells me they do, or, at very least, it would be hard to convince a court they don’t.
Not everything is all or nothing. It’s not that you either are completely liable or not liable at all. That’s not how this works. If you are not liable at all, you should move to dismiss. The way this case was designed, based on the allegations, Disney does bear responsibility. But the allegations only include Disney in the most tenuous of ways. So a motion to dismiss would NOT have worked. But IMO, they are not liable at all. This was a restaurant that leased Disney land that screwed up. I can’t see how Disney had anything to do with this at all.
If they only bore a small liability, they would have just had their legal team reseach what the person suing would most likely get, then provide that information, and an offer based on that information, before doing anything else. You know, like what normally happens when a company gets sued. The fact that they went straight to some hail mary strategy tells me they believe they are on the hook for big money, or will have a hard time proving they aren’t.
Some junior unpaid intern was tasked with reading all their agreements to see if there was anything they could use. They pitched this and the rest was history
😊 Well, you might think so, but if that were true then their legal team would have to be unimaginably inept. Even small companies rely on arbitration clauses. A company the size of Disney probably has boilerplate arbitration clauses prolifically spread throughout any agreement they make. I don’t imagine there’s anything their legal team says more often when they are named in a suit than, “can we arbitrate?”
So, yes they were relying on a remote technicality to get out of the suit, but that’s also the only reason they were named in the suit. I don’t blame them. And they know they wouldn’t be found liable. But they also know that people only remember “the mcdonalds hot coffee lawsuit” being about some unintelligent gold digging woman (which BTW is a travesty). So the settlement that they will likely offer is going to be worth far less than the damage from the bad rep of a trial like this.
I’m guessing the legal department had been looking for a test case to see how far they could take the forced arbitration clause in the Disney+ ToS, but they didn’t consult the PR department as to whether this would be a good idea.
I’m kind of horrified that someone not only didn’t run that idea by PR, but couldn’t piece together using their own common sense that loudly declaring “Our company is allowed to straight up murder you because Mickey Mouse is bigger than God, and we’re not even kidding!” was not exactly going to fly with…
Anyone at all really
Neither happened. The restaurant isn’t owned by Disney, it is just listed on their website as a recommended place for allergy free dining, and they while own the property, it isn’t a part of the actual park, springs, etc. The family signed up for D+, and therefore “read” the terms, including the arbitration, and then used their D+ account to sign up for the trip, and had to “read” the terms again. The whole D+ argument wasn’t that they had to go to arbitration because they used the streaming, it was to show they had to go through the same terms multiple times and should be familiar with them. Agreements requiring arbitration are indeed bullshit and should be more limited, but this is proper enforcement of a shotty system, not the batshit insane enforcement it has been memed into.
A woman is dead and Disney is happy about it.
They are going after the restaurant. The restaurant is whom they are suing. But they know they won’t get much from an allergy lawsuit settlement with an Irish Pub themed restaurant, so they included the deeper-pocket Disney in the suit (which IMO is a less than honorable act, but in a capitalist society I’m always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the person, also you never know if the legal system is going to choose you to fuck with so I dually recognize the spaghetti-at-the-wall approach to damage remuneration).
Even with that said though, since the guy who decided to risk a life-threatening condition on whether a likely not much more than minimum wage employee could or would know if a thing was allergen free decided to rely on a technicality of civil litigation to get more money, then I can’t fault Disney for using a technicality to try to get out of it.
Fuck Disney in general, but kudos to Disney for taking this on the chin just to not make someone even a perceived victim of their greed. I think it’s honestly respectable. They’re still probably not going to be at fault were it to go to trial, but they’re going to settle and give this guy the obvious payday he wanted.
Good breakdown by LE
Yeah, my understanding is that SOP is to sue everyone even remotely, possibly, responsible, and the courts will work out who is and isn’t likely enough to have to actually defend themselves. This is just a part of the dance.