A Boring Dystopia

Woman died because an employee at a Disney resort served her food with peanuts in it. Her widower tried to sue, because the woman had confirmed with the server that there would be no nuts, and the server assured them there wouldn’t be. So someone on the restaurant’s side fucked up. Pretty open and shut case of negligence.

Disney’s lawyers tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, by saying that the husband had agreed to binding arbitration in the Terms of Service when he signed up for a free two week Disney+ trial on his Xbox several years prior. He never actually paid for a subscription, and cancelled after the free trial. But Disney was saying that the binding arbitration clause was still in effect in perpetuity, even after the trial ended and he cancelled the service.

Disney quickly reversed course (and “allowed” the man to sue them) once they realized it was making headlines, because they didn’t want to deal with the bad PR. But if it hadn’t made headlines, Disney’s lawyers likely would have continued pushing for dismissal.