Disney is trying to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit related to its famous Walt Disney World Resort — popularly known as Disney World — by citing the plaintiff’s subscription to its app offerings, the New York Post reported. Disney argues that the app subscription agreements are unenforceable in court and plaintiff Jeffrey Piccolo is bound by those terms because he signed up to use two of its apps — an argument his lawyers called “absurd.”
Piccolo filed the lawsuit after his wife, doctor Kanokporn Tangsuan, died of a fatal allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant in the resort’s Disney Springs shopping center. The incident occurred in Florida last October.
According to the New York Post report, Disney claimed that the $50,000 lawsuit should be settled through arbitration rather than in court because Piccolo signed up for a month-long trial of the Disney+ streaming service in 2019.
“In the motion filed on May 31 in Orange County District Court in Florida, Disney argued that the Disney+ subscription agreement that Piccolo had signed years earlier for his PlayStation provided that all disputes – except for small claims – were to be ‘resolved through individual binding arbitration,'” the portal reported.
The company said Piccolo agreed to similar terms when he purchased tickets to visit EPCOT, one of the resort’s theme parks, in September 2023 through the My Disney Experience app.
The Disney+ contract released by the company states that subscribers “cannot have a dispute litigated as a class action or action before a private attorney general.” In addition, the contract states, “No arbitration or proceeding may be combined with any other without the prior written consent of all parties to the arbitration or proceeding,” Florida Politics reported.
Piccolo’s lawyers called Disney’s request “outrageously unreasonable.”
“The notion that terms to which a consumer agrees when creating a free trial account for Disney+ would forever deprive that consumer of the right to a jury trial in disputes with a Disney affiliate or subsidiary is so egregiously unreasonable and unfair that it shocks the judicial conscience, and this Court should not enforce such an agreement,” the lawyers wrote in an August 2 motion, according to the New York Post.
They also said Piccolo filed the wrongful death lawsuit as the “personal representative of the estate of Kanokporn Tangsuan” and not in his own name.
Piccolo and Tangsuan, 42, a New York University physician, visited the Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant in Disney Springs on Oct. 5. She reportedly repeatedly told restaurant staff that she had a nut and dairy allergy as she ordered scallops, onion rings, broccoli and corn cakes. The Post report says Tangsuan began having trouble breathing and collapsed shortly after leaving the restaurant.
Although she was immediately given an EpiPen – an emergency medication used to treat severe allergic reactions – she died at the local hospital.
