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klempnertoday at 12:57 PM2 repliesview on HN

Except it is a stretch to say it is "their theme park restaurant". This story was dramatically oversimplified in the media and Disney's position was nowhere near as unreasonable as everyone understands it to be.

The argument was not "they agreed to a EULA 5 years ago and therefore mandatory arbitration in all disputes with Disney".

This is a privately owned restaurant at a glorified shopping mall within the larger Walt Disney World resort. If you died due to a severe allergic reaction at a normal restaurant in a normal shopping mall in Florida the mall owners would generally not be liable unless there's something else going on.

The theory that Disney is liable here is more than anything based on the *restaurant featuring on their app.* The EULA for *that app* would certainly be relevant to this argument.

Now, the Disney lawyers also tried to argue that the Disney+ EULA would actually (at least plausibly) be relevant. That is more than a bit of a stretch, especially for a free trial from years ago, and I'd be surprised (but IANAL) if such a theory would actually hold up in court. Still, on a spectrum from "person died due to maintenance failure on a Magic Kingdom ride" to "person died from going to a restaurant featured on a Disney+ program", if you're arguing that the Disney+ EULA is relevant, this is a whole lot closer to the latter than the former.


Replies

colejohnson66today at 1:16 PM

It's my belief the Disney+ EULA claim was just the lawyers doing the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" shtick (no pun intended). They knew it was likely to not hold up, but tried it anyway because, if it did, it helps future claims.

3formtoday at 2:17 PM

>Disney's position was nowhere near as unreasonable as everyone understands it to be.

>Now, the Disney lawyers also tried to argue that the Disney+ EULA would actually (at least plausibly) be relevant.

Well, you know, they also could have not done _that_. With it they deserve all the flak that they've got and more, simply because they resorted to a scummy tactic, whatever the reason.