6 ms·

The bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can only win. In the unlikely best case, they get the case dismissed, but even in the m

The bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can only win. In the unlikely best case, they get the case dismissed, but even in the most likely case that the motion is denied, they win by wearing down their opponent who has much more limited resources and is personally affected by the case dragging out, i.e. more likely to accept a (lower) settlement than without this tactic. The only downside is a tiny bit of legal costs. Courts should be able to issue sanctions/extra damages for the use of such tactics. If using such a tactic turned the claim from "you killed this person negligently" to "you killed this person negligently, then willfully tried sleazy tricks to create additional suffering for the husband", and had the potential to double the award, companies would be much less eager to play this game.

make3 2y ago
I would assume that lawyer companies might want to take this on without charging the person just because the potential upside of winning the lawsuit or settling it is so big. I agree with the general case that the legal system is really not accessible to everyone though ofc
thih9 2y ago
In general I agree, except perhaps "Disney can only win.". They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. Their service is hospitality and the message they're sending here is very much inhospitable. It might turn into a meme, like "Cancel your Disney+ before visiting Disney IRL". It might make people hesitate and/or choose a different holiday destination. Etc.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business.
  - roshin 2y ago
    Bud light is a famous recent example. Of course, the company is large enough that it didn't make the company bankrupt, but it hurt them
    - collingreen 2y ago
      It hurts my heart that all the examples above of companies hurting people or lying have very few consequences but bud light took a brand hit because they paid a trans person.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        Not because they paid a trans person, but because they made them part of the marketing. A product mostly marketed to the very demographic that is transphobic. It’s not at all surprising this backfired. Companies only started putting gay couples in commercials regularly years after gay marriage was legalized nationally.
        didiop 2y ago
        Did you see Mulvaney's portrayal of "girlhood" though? Incredibly, ridiculously sexist. Let's not forget that the backlash against him has been for a variety of reasons, and one of them is his blatant misogyny.
        collingreen 2y ago
        Yeah I didn't say "I can't believe this happened!?" I just said it makes me feel bad about things.
  - Singletoned 2y ago
    Ratners is the famous example that springs to mind here in the UK.
  - noisy_boy 2y ago
    > I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials It just have to affect enough to offset the cost of the lawsuit (which probably won't be much because they probably do have plenty of in-house lawyers) + the estimated cost of future lawsuits that might come their way if they appear to be "soft" and/or set precedence.
- Sarkie 2y ago
  It was a 1 month trial. Not even using it. "Disney claims Piccolo reportedly agreed to this in 2019 when signing up for a one-month free trial of the streaming service on his PlayStation console."
  - wang_li 2y ago
    Contracts require an exchange of value. If I got a free trial I would argue they got nothing and so there is no agreement.
    - mauvehaus 2y ago
      On the contrary, it seems extremely valuable to Disney to be able to force all disputes into individual binding arbitration rather than having to go through the courts. On the third hand, it's debatable if anything on Disney+ is of any value either, so it could be argued that the deceased didn't get any value and isn't bound by the agreement. (Yes, yes, I know that's not what you mean, nor is it what "value" means in a legal sense. IANAL, obviously)
- kozinc 2y ago
  Ah no, their argument is because she signed up for a one-month free trial of Disney+ in 2019, she agreed to arbitration for her death in 2023. So by their metric it doesn't matter if you cancel, you're still bound to that if you visit Disney IRL.
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    She didn’t even sign up. It was the husband who signed up.
- yreg 2y ago
  The widower asked for 50k, this negative PR is already worse for DIS than paying out the 50k. Both sides can lose.
  - bugtodiffer 2y ago
    How is it losing to invest 100K to fight off a 50K lawsuit? If they would lose easily, they'd get more lawsuits. They have to scare others off.
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
      If they keep killing people, I should hope they get more lawsuits!
    - yreg 2y ago
      You mean if they killed your wife you wouldn't sue now, because you remember that you have tried out Disney+ once? I don't think this scares anyone of suing Disney. If anything, it scares people away from visiting Disney restaurants and subscribing to Disney products.
  - dudeinjapan 2y ago
    But just think: if they pay this 50K, then the spouse of every person Disney kills is going to start asking for 50K.
    - mcherm 2y ago
      Wow... I guess that would be a great deal of money.
  - jawns 2y ago
    That $50K figure wasn't mentioned in the article above. Where did you see it? I'm surprised that the figure would be so low, both because wrongful death claims are usually 6- or 7-figure amounts, and also because she was a NYC doctor with much higher future earnings potential than the average person. Edit: I see in a previous article on wdwnt.com that "Piccolo is seeking damages in excess of $50,000 under the Florida Wrongful Death Act." That doesn't mean, though, that he's seeking only $50K. I believe it means that he only needs to disclose at this point that the damages he's seeking are at least $50K, but could be much higher.
- bugtodiffer 2y ago
  I would think Disney is too big. Not even 0.1% of all Disney fans will ever know.
  - Temporary_31337 2y ago
    A good portion of HN already knows. Disney+ is struggling as it is. Giving people one more reason not to sign up is not good marketing. Losing 0.1% market share in case of Disney is probably worth more than the whole lawsuit.
    - mcphage 2y ago
      > Disney+ is struggling as it is. Didn’t they just start turning a profit, a year ahead of schedule?
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
        Is this financial outlook posted anywhere digestible (ie not investor reports). I find it wild that it is not profitable. Video streaming is not cheap, but at their scale, they can negotiate the best peering deals or setup edge boxes a la Netflix or YouTube. Then again, maybe it is their core audience which has a different usage pattern from adults. I might watch one show a night. A child might stream for 12 hours a day. Unless Disney went on a spending spree and bought a big number of new movies+shows to publish on the platform, I am surprised. Disney bought Hulu- they could piggy back off of all that existing infrastructure.
        mcphage 2y ago
        > Is this financial outlook posted anywhere digestible (ie not investor reports). I... have no idea. > I find it wild that it is not profitable. The news was that it is profitable now, and sooner than expected. > Unless Disney went on a spending spree and bought a big number of new movies+shows to publish on the platform, I am surprised. They did—they've had a number of Disney+ originals. And the streaming rights for Bluey probably wasn't cheap, given its popularity (and iirc it alone is like 25% of their streaming traffic).
- moss2 2y ago
  Hoping that journalists pick up on cases like these and spread the word wide enough is... optimistic, to say the least. A much better solution is to build incentives into the legal system, like tgsovlerkhgsel suggested. The problem isn't that bad actors abuse the system, the problem is that the system allows bad actors to abuse it.
- mcherm 2y ago
  Yes, except this person DID cancel her Disney+. More accurately, she never signed up for it, merely ran a free trial for a month in 2019. So the only possible way to avoid this, if Disney's argument was upheld, would be to have never interacted with Disney at all in any way.
  - gambiting 2y ago
    >>. More accurately, she never signed up for it, merely ran a free trial for a month in 2019 It's actually not even that. The person who died had the free trial, and now Disney is being sued by her husband - and her husband has never had a Disney+ trial or any other service with such an agreement with them. So like the article says - Disney is trying to anforce an agreement that this person(the husband ) has never signed.
    - jawns 2y ago
      Your point is correct, but you've got it backward. It was the husband who signed up for the free trial and bought tickets to Epcot. Yet he is suing not on his own behalf, but on behalf of her estate, and she never entered into any such agreement. You can think of it this way: Disney wronged the woman who died. She is the one who is owed damages. But since she's dead, her estate is owed damages. Her husband is the administrator of her estate, and he is suing on its behalf. So whatever agreements he has entered into in his individual capacity are irrelevant. It would be like trying to force arbitration on someone because their lawyer had a Disney+ subscription. That doesn't mean that they themselves entered into an agreement with Disney.
      - gambiting 2y ago
        Ah. Totally got it wrong then, thanks for explaining :-)
        jawns 2y ago
        [flagged]
- benterix 2y ago
  > "Cancel your Disney+ before visiting Disney IRL". And if you haven't, don't subscribe to this service as it can be used against you.
piker 2y ago
This post dramatically underestimates the tenacity of the US plaintiff's bar. Doubly so as of late given the rise of litigation funding.
- whaleofatw2022 2y ago
  Tbh I would love if they spun the motion into upping the damages in a nuclear verdict.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can only win Judges are humans. Pissing them off from the outset isn’t costless.
cs702 2y ago
> The bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can... For large corporations and rich individuals that are in the wrong, this isn't a bug of the US legal system. It's a feature. Dragging the legal process through the courts for as long as possible -- typically, years -- is part of the standard playbook. As you point out, the goal is to wear down -- and maybe exhaust the financial resources of -- the other party.
edwinjm 2y ago
> Disney can only win If an agreement is not consistent with the law, the law wins en the agreement is (partially or as a whole) void.
TheIronBird 2y ago
idk, to me it seems like no matter what this is a lose/lose situation for disney. either way it's bad press, which granted doesn't mean much in the long run assuming the motion to dismiss is denied and it moves forward, regardless of which way it is eventually ruled, doesn't this eventually open it up for federal courts to rule all forced arbitration agreements in T&C's void? (or more likely assuming they rule against disney, limit them to less severe crimes) though that the widow is willing/able to move forward with appeals process, the latter of which likely won't be possible without some civil rights activists group stepping in to provide pro bono legal assistance a settlement seems unlikely, since the widow only went forward with this case because Disney refused a 50k settlement, the cheap bastards. They are almost certainly spending more on lawyer fees than it would have cost them to settle this out of court
jimt1234 2y ago
I've got a hunch that the "bug in the legal system" is forced arbitration. I have zero actual experience here, but my general feeling is that arbitration rarely works out to the benefit of the plaintiff. Or, put another way, arbitration always benefits large corporations, like Disney. Is there any truth to that?
- P_I_Staker 2y ago
  Perhaps

make3 2y ago

I would assume that lawyer companies might want to take this on without charging the person just because the potential upside of winning the lawsuit or settling it is so big. I agree with the general case that the legal system is really not accessible to everyone though ofc

thih9 2y ago

In general I agree, except perhaps "Disney can only win.". They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. Their service is hospitality and the message they're sending here is very much inhospitable. It might turn into a meme, like "Cancel your Disney+ before visiting Disney IRL". It might make people hesitate and/or choose a different holiday destination. Etc.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss. When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business.
- roshin 2y ago
  Bud light is a famous recent example. Of course, the company is large enough that it didn't make the company bankrupt, but it hurt them
  - collingreen 2y ago
    It hurts my heart that all the examples above of companies hurting people or lying have very few consequences but bud light took a brand hit because they paid a trans person.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      Not because they paid a trans person, but because they made them part of the marketing. A product mostly marketed to the very demographic that is transphobic. It’s not at all surprising this backfired. Companies only started putting gay couples in commercials regularly years after gay marriage was legalized nationally.
      - didiop 2y ago
        Did you see Mulvaney's portrayal of "girlhood" though? Incredibly, ridiculously sexist. Let's not forget that the backlash against him has been for a variety of reasons, and one of them is his blatant misogyny.
      - collingreen 2y ago
        Yeah I didn't say "I can't believe this happened!?" I just said it makes me feel bad about things.
- Singletoned 2y ago
  Ratners is the famous example that springs to mind here in the UK.
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  > I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials It just have to affect enough to offset the cost of the lawsuit (which probably won't be much because they probably do have plenty of in-house lawyers) + the estimated cost of future lawsuits that might come their way if they appear to be "soft" and/or set precedence.
Sarkie 2y ago
It was a 1 month trial. Not even using it. "Disney claims Piccolo reportedly agreed to this in 2019 when signing up for a one-month free trial of the streaming service on his PlayStation console."
- wang_li 2y ago
  Contracts require an exchange of value. If I got a free trial I would argue they got nothing and so there is no agreement.
  - mauvehaus 2y ago
    On the contrary, it seems extremely valuable to Disney to be able to force all disputes into individual binding arbitration rather than having to go through the courts. On the third hand, it's debatable if anything on Disney+ is of any value either, so it could be argued that the deceased didn't get any value and isn't bound by the agreement. (Yes, yes, I know that's not what you mean, nor is it what "value" means in a legal sense. IANAL, obviously)
kozinc 2y ago
Ah no, their argument is because she signed up for a one-month free trial of Disney+ in 2019, she agreed to arbitration for her death in 2023. So by their metric it doesn't matter if you cancel, you're still bound to that if you visit Disney IRL.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  She didn’t even sign up. It was the husband who signed up.
yreg 2y ago
The widower asked for 50k, this negative PR is already worse for DIS than paying out the 50k. Both sides can lose.
- bugtodiffer 2y ago
  How is it losing to invest 100K to fight off a 50K lawsuit? If they would lose easily, they'd get more lawsuits. They have to scare others off.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    If they keep killing people, I should hope they get more lawsuits!
  - yreg 2y ago
    You mean if they killed your wife you wouldn't sue now, because you remember that you have tried out Disney+ once? I don't think this scares anyone of suing Disney. If anything, it scares people away from visiting Disney restaurants and subscribing to Disney products.
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  But just think: if they pay this 50K, then the spouse of every person Disney kills is going to start asking for 50K.
  - mcherm 2y ago
    Wow... I guess that would be a great deal of money.
- jawns 2y ago
  That $50K figure wasn't mentioned in the article above. Where did you see it? I'm surprised that the figure would be so low, both because wrongful death claims are usually 6- or 7-figure amounts, and also because she was a NYC doctor with much higher future earnings potential than the average person. Edit: I see in a previous article on wdwnt.com that "Piccolo is seeking damages in excess of $50,000 under the Florida Wrongful Death Act." That doesn't mean, though, that he's seeking only $50K. I believe it means that he only needs to disclose at this point that the damages he's seeking are at least $50K, but could be much higher.
bugtodiffer 2y ago
I would think Disney is too big. Not even 0.1% of all Disney fans will ever know.
- Temporary_31337 2y ago
  A good portion of HN already knows. Disney+ is struggling as it is. Giving people one more reason not to sign up is not good marketing. Losing 0.1% market share in case of Disney is probably worth more than the whole lawsuit.
  - mcphage 2y ago
    > Disney+ is struggling as it is. Didn’t they just start turning a profit, a year ahead of schedule?
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      Is this financial outlook posted anywhere digestible (ie not investor reports). I find it wild that it is not profitable. Video streaming is not cheap, but at their scale, they can negotiate the best peering deals or setup edge boxes a la Netflix or YouTube. Then again, maybe it is their core audience which has a different usage pattern from adults. I might watch one show a night. A child might stream for 12 hours a day. Unless Disney went on a spending spree and bought a big number of new movies+shows to publish on the platform, I am surprised. Disney bought Hulu- they could piggy back off of all that existing infrastructure.
      - mcphage 2y ago
        > Is this financial outlook posted anywhere digestible (ie not investor reports). I... have no idea. > I find it wild that it is not profitable. The news was that it is profitable now, and sooner than expected. > Unless Disney went on a spending spree and bought a big number of new movies+shows to publish on the platform, I am surprised. They did—they've had a number of Disney+ originals. And the streaming rights for Bluey probably wasn't cheap, given its popularity (and iirc it alone is like 25% of their streaming traffic).
moss2 2y ago
Hoping that journalists pick up on cases like these and spread the word wide enough is... optimistic, to say the least. A much better solution is to build incentives into the legal system, like tgsovlerkhgsel suggested. The problem isn't that bad actors abuse the system, the problem is that the system allows bad actors to abuse it.
mcherm 2y ago
Yes, except this person DID cancel her Disney+. More accurately, she never signed up for it, merely ran a free trial for a month in 2019. So the only possible way to avoid this, if Disney's argument was upheld, would be to have never interacted with Disney at all in any way.
- gambiting 2y ago
  >>. More accurately, she never signed up for it, merely ran a free trial for a month in 2019 It's actually not even that. The person who died had the free trial, and now Disney is being sued by her husband - and her husband has never had a Disney+ trial or any other service with such an agreement with them. So like the article says - Disney is trying to anforce an agreement that this person(the husband ) has never signed.
  - jawns 2y ago
    Your point is correct, but you've got it backward. It was the husband who signed up for the free trial and bought tickets to Epcot. Yet he is suing not on his own behalf, but on behalf of her estate, and she never entered into any such agreement. You can think of it this way: Disney wronged the woman who died. She is the one who is owed damages. But since she's dead, her estate is owed damages. Her husband is the administrator of her estate, and he is suing on its behalf. So whatever agreements he has entered into in his individual capacity are irrelevant. It would be like trying to force arbitration on someone because their lawyer had a Disney+ subscription. That doesn't mean that they themselves entered into an agreement with Disney.
    - gambiting 2y ago
      Ah. Totally got it wrong then, thanks for explaining :-)
      - jawns 2y ago
        [flagged]
benterix 2y ago
> "Cancel your Disney+ before visiting Disney IRL". And if you haven't, don't subscribe to this service as it can be used against you.

piker 2y ago

This post dramatically underestimates the tenacity of the US plaintiff's bar. Doubly so as of late given the rise of litigation funding.

whaleofatw2022 2y ago
Tbh I would love if they spun the motion into upping the damages in a nuclear verdict.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can only win Judges are humans. Pissing them off from the outset isn’t costless.

cs702 2y ago

> The bug in the legal system is that by filing this motion/claim, Disney can... For large corporations and rich individuals that are in the wrong, this isn't a bug of the US legal system. It's a feature. Dragging the legal process through the courts for as long as possible -- typically, years -- is part of the standard playbook. As you point out, the goal is to wear down -- and maybe exhaust the financial resources of -- the other party.

edwinjm 2y ago

> Disney can only win If an agreement is not consistent with the law, the law wins en the agreement is (partially or as a whole) void.

TheIronBird 2y ago

idk, to me it seems like no matter what this is a lose/lose situation for disney. either way it's bad press, which granted doesn't mean much in the long run assuming the motion to dismiss is denied and it moves forward, regardless of which way it is eventually ruled, doesn't this eventually open it up for federal courts to rule all forced arbitration agreements in T&C's void? (or more likely assuming they rule against disney, limit them to less severe crimes) though that the widow is willing/able to move forward with appeals process, the latter of which likely won't be possible without some civil rights activists group stepping in to provide pro bono legal assistance a settlement seems unlikely, since the widow only went forward with this case because Disney refused a 50k settlement, the cheap bastards. They are almost certainly spending more on lawyer fees than it would have cost them to settle this out of court

jimt1234 2y ago

I've got a hunch that the "bug in the legal system" is forced arbitration. I have zero actual experience here, but my general feeling is that arbitration rarely works out to the benefit of the plaintiff. Or, put another way, arbitration always benefits large corporations, like Disney. Is there any truth to that?

P_I_Staker 2y ago
Perhaps