Disney tried to force the case into arbitration by citing the agreement on the widower’s Disney Plus trial account.
Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial.
“With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” chairman of Disney experiences Josh D’Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. “As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”
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Josh D’Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. “As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”
Sounds to me like they just want to keep that umbrella waiver in the Disney+ agreement rather than have that, rightly, struck down in court. They are very much still working under the assumption that a subscriber clicking “I Agree” to watch The Mandalorian waives any right to trial against any business unit of Disney Corp for any reason.
Absolutely despicable.
You agreed to Disneys TOS
Assassins from Disney licking their fingers because they can legally kill you /j
Its the dumbest death you can have in an amusement park, dying because the restaurant didnt labeled their allergies right and that the corporation tries to dismiss it because of an DIGITIAL contract that was made for a digital service.
But this is the bs that you got by applying law so freely.
Yep, exactly.
They’re asserting and graciously waiving a “right” they invented themselves in order to keep that from being challenged in court.
An umbrella arbitration clause like this, if it were argued at court, surely would only be held up for cases related to Disney+. At least one would hope. Having such an agreement cover entirely separate arms of a company is ridiculous.
Arbitration contracts, especially in click-through licenses, are always bullshit and should be universally thrown out.
Arbitration contracts
especially in click-through licensesare always bullshit and should be universally thrown out.
There should be no reason why a corporation ahould be able to avoid the justice system for any reason.
All unilateral contracts where one side holds all the cards and can arbitrarily dictate or even alter previously agreed to terms should be held to the strictest standards. This includes employment agreements, terms of service, license agreements and so on.
Contracts between equals can be more permissive.
Too. Late.
Arbitration is an abomination, abused to quash the rights of regular people who could hardly afford to take a stand against the big guy in the first place.
That a person can sign away their legal rights at all is a miscarriage of justice.
Yeah that’s basically “slavery is okay if you sign a contract first”. Should be self evidently wrong.
I mean in the US it’s currently “slavery is okay if you get thrown in jail first”.
So it’s unfortunately not that big of a leap in their logic
Arbitration, generally, is not a bad idea. It’s less formal and usually less expensive when you have a disagreement. It really is designed for, say, two friends who are going into business together and want to keep things friendly while giving each other the ability to seek an external arbitor.
However, it’s our late stage capitalism that has made forced arbitration an abomination, with corporations seeking to limit their liability by making it unprofitable for individuals to seek legal remedies against very large corporations. Corporations that have the legal equivalent of nukes verses the average customer who has a peashooter.
I’m at the point whenever I see these clauses to snail mail then my own terms and if they don’t react, I assume that my terms were accepted. I’ve been doing this now for the last few years and have yet to have a company shut off my service or reply back.
snail mail then my own terms and if they don’t react, I assume that my terms were accepted.
I’m pretty sure you haven’t run this strategy by a lawyer. If you’ve actively agreed to their terms and they haven’t responded to your counter terms… How do you imagine a court is going to interpret that?
I use their exact same language of “by continuing to allow access to the system, you agree to the terms.”
I am not a lawyer but the way I see it, there is no downside.
- if it’s accepted by a court, then I win
- if it’s not accepted, then the language itself is now influx, opening the door for me or others to use the ruling to continue to chip away at forced arbitration and I’m no worse off than just accepting their terms
However, it’s our late stage capitalism
It’s not capitalism. It’s rent-seeking, which is what came before capitalism. The “Free Market” that Adam Smith talked about wasn’t a market free from regulations, it was a market free from economic rents, free from monopolies, etc. The big problems we’re seeing now aren’t because we have too much capitalism, it’s because the capitalism we have is shifting more towards rent-seeking, monopolies, artificial scarcity, etc. It’s basically feudalism. In a proper capitalist system you have competition. That’s the “free market”. If someone doesn’t like the decisions a business is making, they’ll switch to another one.
Companies can only get away with the kinds of things Disney tries when they don’t have to worry about competition. In other words, it’s no longer a capitalist system, it’s a rent-seeking business. Disney is built around its intellectual property, and IP is nothing but rent-seeking. Nobody can compete with Disney and make a better Star Wars movie because Disney owns the rights to anything Star Wars related.
I’m just confused how anyone thought this was a good idea to begin with. Surely the strong public backlash could have been easily anticipated.
Most of the time it’s not as egregious as trying to use a free trial for streaming to force arbitration for wrongful death at an amusement park. I truly can’t imagine any world where this doesn’t blow up because it’s so outrageous.
The world where the government is for the corporations not the people. We’re getting very nearly there, with legal bribery and corporations being considered “people”.
Sure the people might be outraged, but legally outage doesn’t matter and the corporations have a huge power advantage over a single person.
