Thing is, Disney wins a lot of lawsuits. What if they actually win this, especially in a higher court? Every tech company in the US would shove this into their TOS and basically be immune to lawsuits like this...
Forced arbitration is in my opinion already a bullshit thing, but saying that the TOS of your streaming service applies to your resorts, parks and restaurants is something so dystopian that I can't believe this even could have been stated seriously.
The consequences of the result of this lawsuit are going to be fucking ridiculous.
Yes. A woman died of allergic reactions when eating at a disney-owned restaurant after telling the waitstaff repeatedly about her allergies.
Her husband then sued the restaurant, because that's already fucking insane.
Disney then argued that actually, the court didn't have jurisdiction because the husband had agreed to arbitration when he signed up to Disney+'s free trial 2 years prior.
His lawyers seem to actually be worth their money and are fighting this.
After seeing this comment I had to check how Disney is involved if they don't own the restaurant. The restaurant is in Disney World (specifically Disney Springs). https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go
IIUC that does put the restaurant in the special tax district that gives Disney the authority of a county government. But my very cursory search seems to indicate that restaurant safety oversight is managed at the state level.
In my fantasy timeline this is forced to go to arbitration but the arbiter actually is a human being who is so outraged at the circumstances that they award the entire net worth of the Disney corporation as damages in a legally binding non-appealable decision.
Companies left and right will start creating EULAs with forced arbitration clauses for all kinds of crazy things... Shit like "Being in the general vicinity of one of our buildings, you agree with our license terms". Or "saying the name of our company, you agree with our EULA". Or "By being alive, you agree to our EULA".
Luckily it has been decided just showing it to you, or having it exist but not showing it to you, are not enough enough to say you agree. They must show it to you and you must actually agree to it. The issue is we have to go through these all the time. Even if you're a lawyer, there's no way you have enough time in your day to read all of every EULA that comes your way. You have to assume they aren't too bad.
There really should be length and understandability requirements to this stuff. Maybe create a standard form all of them can choose to include for all the basic stuff so you know it in advance. Everything else must be under a given length and can't be too hard to understand.
That's the only silver lining I can think of with Ron DeSantis and the fight Disney chose to pick with him. Imagine pissing off the Republicans to the point where they do positive copyright reforms.
I hate that I am hoping for right wing hate to get out of a world where signing up for a Disney+ Free Trial gives Disney immunity from manslaughter on account of negligence.