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Disney said late Wednesday that it is “deeply saddened” by the family’s loss but stressed the Irish pub is neither owned nor operated by the company. The company’s stance in the litigation doesn’t affect the plaintiff’s claims against the eatery, it added.
“We are merely defending ourselves against the plaintiff’s attorney’s attempt to include us in their lawsuit against the restaurant,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.
For some reason that word "merely" just gets right under my skin. Like they KNOW it's peak slimy, but they are just trying to do their job, man.
...Which is to protect the company at the expense of anything else: Reason, decency, consumer rights...
Honestly, isn't them invoking the arbitration clause a direct admission of guilt? Had they just came to court and said "we have nothing to do with it" they might've just gotten away with it. Like this, they literally drag themselves into the suit and say you can't sue me. Not a good look.
The way these big firms work is they make a bunch of almost contradictory arguments and you have to show they're all false in order to win the law suit.
So it'll look like:
- I didn't do it.
- Even if I did do it you can't prove it was me.
- Even if you can prove it was me I wouldn't be liable.
- Even if I was liable this has to be settled by arbitration.
So you have to get through arguments 4 and 3 first, to show that it's worth the court trying to find out what happened. Then they'll fight you tooth and nail on points 1 and 2 later.
No, it isn't. It's saying, look, we had nothing to do with this because it was outside of our reasonable control, and even if we were somehow in control of this independent entity, this is the wrong venue because they agreed to this arbitration clause.
Moreover, per another article on NPR, "Disney says Piccolo agreed to similar language again when purchasing park tickets online in September 2023. Whether he actually read the fine print at any point, it adds, is "immaterial."" In other words, he agreed to arbitration when he bought the ticket to Disney World, and it was while at the park, at an independent restaurant, that Ms. Tangsuan had a fatal allergic reaction.
Is that arbitration agreement reasonable? Personally, I lean towards no, but that's mostly because arbitration is almost always in favor of the corporation. If it was truly a neutral process? Then yeah, I'd mostly support it, because it's pretty easy for a defendant like Disney to bury any single plaintiff. (OTOH, it makes class action suits much harder.) Is it even valid, since it's the estate that's suing Disney, rather than her husband, and the estate didn't exist when the tickets were bought and so couldn't have agreed to the terms? Hard to say.
Yeah. "I didn't kill her. But even if I did, here's my get out of jail free card."
The problem is just going to court and saying "we have nothing to do with it" is both expensive and can end up with them going to trial. If they believe they have nothing to do with the incident, this is their easiest route.
Not trying to defend a big corp like Disney (they have plenty of money and can easily cover it), but I was just involved in a suite brought against me and in the end even though it would have been an "easy win" for us, it still would have cost us more money to fight it out in court than it was to just settle. And that's assuming the trial went our way which is never a guarantee.