Florida property insurers contemplating the expanded use of binding arbitration to settle claims disputes could wish to ponder a latest arbitration transfer by Walt Disney Parks and Resorts: A solution to a lawsuit towards Disney, which has made headlines on each side of the Atlantic, contends {that a} five-year-old trial subscription to a Disney streaming service mandates that wrongful loss of life claims should be arbitrated outdoors a courtroom.
Within the submitting in Orange County, Florida, Disney argues that arbitration would assist it keep away from “heavy litigation prices.” The lawsuit was filed by the husband of a girl who died in 2023 from an allergic response to meals served at a Disney-affiliated restaurant.
Orange County courtroom information weren’t accessible on-line Wednesday. However the Legislation&Crime news site supplied a obtain of the grievance and of Disney’s movement to compel arbitration. The lawsuit grievance argues that the girl, Kanokporn Tangsuan, had a extreme allergy to dairy and nuts. When the household visited Disney World final yr, they selected to eat at Raglan Highway Irish Pub, inside the Disney Springs advanced, due to its allergen-free pledge. Disney Parks leases the property to the restaurant firm, courtroom filings present.
The girl, a medical physician in New York, repeatedly requested service employees if the meals may very well be made allergen-free. The employees assured them a number of occasions that it could be. However after ending her meal, Tangsuan returned to her resort room, started having bother respiratory and collapsed. She later died of what the lawsuit stated was anaphylaxis from an allergic response to the meals.
The husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, filed go well with towards Disney and the restaurant earlier this yr. A listening to is ready for October.
Disney attorneys didn’t reply to requests for remark from Nationwide Public Radio and different information organizations that reported on the case.
In its motion to have the suit dismissed, Disney attorneys argued that in 2019, Piccolo had signed up for a trial subscription to Disney+, a video streaming service. The nice print within the subscriber settlement notes that “any dispute between you and us, aside from small claims, is topic to a category motion waiver and should be resolved by particular person binding arbitration,” Disney’s courtroom submitting defined.
Comparable language could have been included in an settlement when Piccolo bought tickets for the Disney theme park.
Piccolo’s attorneys, in courtroom filings, known as Disney’s authorized argument “preposterous,” approaching the surreal, and fatally flawed. Disney is attempting to deprive the household of its proper to a public jury trial, the legal professionals stated.
“Even assuming that Ms. Tangsuan’s Property is certain by the arbitration provision within the Disney+ Subscriber Settlement with Mr. Piccolo, the phrases of the settlement make it clear that Mr. Piccolo was solely doubtlessly agreeing to arbitrate claims regarding the Disney+ streaming service,” reads the prolonged response to the movement to compel arbitration. “The Disney+ Subscriber Settlement on its face establishes that there was no settlement to arbitrate harm claims towards different Disney entities.”
The Tangsuan household is represented partially by Miami lawyer Raoul Cantero, a former Florida Supreme Courtroom justice who has been concerned in other major lawsuits that might impression insurance coverage settlements.
Photograph: The Ragland Highway Irish Pub at Disney Springs (Adobe inventory photographs).
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