Disney is trying to cancel a lawsuit against the company over a woman’s death because the widower… signed up for a free trial of Disney+ five years ago.
The Disney+ streaming service has a policy that redirects legal complaints from court proceedings to forced arbitration. Corporate lawyers are now claiming that this policy somehow applies to the case of a woman’s death in one of the amusement parks.
Jeffrey Piccolo filed the lawsuit after his wife, 42-year-old physician Canokporn Tansuan, died in «Disney Springs», Florida, last year. Piccolo and Tansuan were having lunch at one of the resort’s restaurants. The waiter repeatedly assured them that Tangxuan’s meal would be prepared without dairy products and nuts, to which she was fatally allergic. Shortly after eating the meal, the woman went into anaphylactic shock and died. An investigation by a forensic medical examiner found that the cause of death was anaphylaxis due to the high level of dairy and nuts in her system.
Disney claims that Piccolo cannot sue the company because he briefly signed up for a free trial of Disney+ in 2019. According to its terms of use, all legal actions must be directed to compulsory arbitration: a common legal tactic that allows companies to avoid litigation. The company claims that the plaintiff also used the My Disney Experience app to buy tickets to a theme park — a service that also contains a similar legal provision.
Piccolo’s lawyers call the company’s argument ridiculous:
«[Disney] clearly seeks to prohibit the 150 million Disney+ subscribers from ever bringing a wrongful death case against it before a jury, even if the facts of the case have nothing to do with Disney+. … The idea that the terms agreed to by a consumer at the time of creating a free Disney+ trial account will forever deprive that consumer of the right to a jury trial in any dispute with any Disney affiliate or subsidiary is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience, and this Court should not enforce such an agreement».
The plaintiff is seeking a fairly small compensation of over $50,000 from Disney for emotional distress, loss of companionship and protection, loss of income, and medical and funeral expenses. The company’s stunning response will probably be a reason for some to never subscribe to Disney+ and not deal with it at all.