Arbitration clauses must be made illegal
Or at least reasonable.
It’s perfectly reasonable for, say, a tattoo artist not to be liable for the medical bills, if the ink causes a hitherto unknown allergy to kick in.
It’s not reasonable to argue that a streaming service agreement covers liability for being cut in half by a train.
There has to be a reasonable understanding of the underlying risks that are covered. Some things are just inherently risky, and if the buyer knows and understands that, she can agree on taking that risk. Otherwise, no doctor would ever touch any patient ever again.
Arbitration is never the right answer. Fix the judicial system, don’t privatize it.
I think we should be allowed to opt in to arbitration from within the public judicial system, once charges have already been brought forward. Then people will only agree to it when it’s legit just saving time/money, and won’t change the likely ruling.
A public system designed for everyone can never be as cheap as one specific to the issue/people at hand. It just needs to always be available as a fallback.
I think what you are mentioning is basically how settlements work.
I just can’t see how an arbitration company that is selected by a company will ever have the incentives to side with consumers.
I can only see arbitration working when both sides have equal leverage. Large company vs large company, citizen vs citizen. And both sides must have a say on which arbitration company is selected.
What I’m mentioning will frequently lead to settlements, but the choice of whether or not to use arbitration is typically made before there’s any case.
Both sides don’t have equal leverage today because of an information asymmetry market failure. The cost to the consumer to read the ToS (and research its arbitrators) for everything they buy is unreasonably high, while it costs the company very little. If consumers only had to research arbitrators after the fact, then the company would have a strong incentive to agree to a fair one, avoiding the public courts.
Otherwise, no doctor would ever touch any patient ever again.
Demonstrably false. In a public healthcare system it is also possible to have publicly funded patient injury compensation systems. Source: Live in Norway and we have both.
That’s not the same. You still don’t have any legal claims against the hospital or the doctor. You can’t sue your surgeon, because you missed, say another week of work because of some unexpected bleeding.
Uhm what are you talking about? Why would I want to sue my surgeon?
EDIT: The reasons why I would not sue my surgeon are:
- It is not a private legal matter, but a matter of adequate services rendered.
- The question of liability can be better answered by a specialized team of doctors that review my case than a jury.
- Legal action is an obstacle made to disenfranchise those that cannot afford counsel, which is why the US loves it and we generally don’t.
- We have laws that demand reasonable judgement. Hence I cannot make a claim for damages due to some unrelated reason and they cannot evade guilt by the same tactic.
If the surgeon did something illegal, this would be a different matter.
The whole point of the discussion was that arbitration clauses should be illegal, since they prevent you from suing.
Points were made, that it’s still a good thing for tattoo artists and doctors. Your earlier comment seemed to dispute this at first, but then pivoted to funds for damages (that exist and you can get without legal action.
You were then told that’s besides the point of the discussion, since it was exactly about suing.
It is not besides the point because there exists an alternative to the whole ordeal of arbitration clauses and suing. That is what I pointed out.
We all joke about how americans sue for the most stupid shit, but (besides different mindsets following from the same reason) you do it because your system allows for it and provides no alternative course of action.
Well it wasn’t demonstratably false in any case, as it’s the only course of action in some places.
In a perfect world these arbitration clauses wouldn’t exist, and luckily they aren’t enforceable in many countries.
Your tattoo example doesn’t make sense to me. The tattoo shop could require an agreement limiting liability without denying access to the courts.
Are you saying that it’s reasonable to be allowed to waive your right to access the legal system when getting a tattoo but not when accessing streaming services?
no doctor would ever touch any patient ever again.
My country has heavy immunity for doctors. I think we can’t sue them, like it’s automatically a regional arbitration hearing, and at no point can one get “pain and suffering” but only “recoup of costs to fix as much as possible” kind of stuff.
So if the doc removes the wrong foot, he’ll lose his job, and you’ll get a pegleg or something like that.
Hmm. Just reading that makes me think the rate of vindictive doctor slayings is too low for that to be true.
…and immunity is exactly what this is about.
Every time you get surgery, you sign a waiver basically saying “there’s an inherent risk to this, we’re not liable unless someone really screws up”. And that’s exactly what Disney is trying here - just using an absolutely bonkers interpretation of it.
I would like to see whether and how a case of Negligence should work with the boilerplate arbitration clauses that they’re abusing.
Would Disney then roll over and sue the everliving out of the server as a scapegoat?
It’s perfectly reasonable for, say, a tattoo artist not to be liable for the medical bills, if the ink causes a hitherto unknown allergy to kick in.
Why would it be rasonable? Did the tatoo artist do what is (keyword:) reasonable on their end to ensure that doesn’t happen? Did they make information about tatoo ink allergies known to their customers? Do they advise their customers about the allergies? Do they use FDA approved tatoo inks?
It’s not reasonable to argue that a streaming service agreement covers liability for being cut in half by a train.
Did the streaming service clearly for example cause magnetic interference and was ruled as a large contributor to the disaster? If yes, then it’s reasonable.
Whatever scenatio you think of, there’s always room for liability. Some, nay, mlst of it’s far-fetched, but not impossible.
However there’s at least one thing that’s never reasonable, and that’s arbitration itself. Arbitration is someone making a decition which can’t be amended after it’s made. It can’t be appealed. New evidence coming to light after-the-fact means nothing. Arvbitration is absolute.
Arbitration doesn’t allow complaint. The judgement is final.
Which is fucking ridiculous.
Let’s return to your two claims of unreasonability:
It’s perfectly reasonable for, say, a tattoo artist not to be liable for the medical bills, if the ink causes a hitherto unknown allergy to kick in.
It’s not reasonable to argue that a streaming service agreement covers liability for being cut in half by a train.
There’s nothing stopping a normal court from fairly making a judgement. It can be appealed, which is fine.
What isn’t fine is giving a company, or a like-minded court sole and absolute jurisdictions over suits against a company by its users. And above that, making said judgements unappealable.
To paraphrase you: there has to be a reasonable understanding of the underlying facts of the case covered. Some claims are clearly ubsubstantiated. Some, however, are clearly substantiated and if the service provider knows and understands that, they would accept the jurisdiction of the court system without carveouts grossly in their favour.
They are in the rest of the first world countries.
You need to reform lawsuits at the same time. The US legal system allows lawyers to take cases on contingency, getting paid only if they win. In most other countries this isn’t allowed. In addition, in most other countries it’s much easier for the winner of the lawsuit to recover the legal costs of the lawsuit from the loser.
The result of this is that the US has a lot more nuisance and extremely speculative lawsuits. Under those conditions, a binding arbitration setup is more reasonable. It means that neither side is spending tons of money on lawyers. If you reform the legal system so that only people who stand a decent chance of winning are willing to sue, then definitely get rid of binding arbitration.
Make sure to pirate all Disney media instead of consuming it legally so that you can sue them if they try to kill you.
That’s what I don’t get about this. The point is either to get out of paying or at least make it very difficult. At the same time the cost to Disney as a company with all the bad press and fall out from doing this would be orders of magnitude greater than simply paying the widower compensation. Who signed off on it? The idea that a lawyer can do what ever it takes to win a case while simultaneously destroying the company they work for seems dumb as shit from a purely financial point of view.
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Just pirate that shit
For many parents, it’s quicker to pay $10 for Disney+ than to load up a torrenting site and download the torrents every time. As a former piece of shit bratty toddler, I can understand why many parents would rather pay.
Is there any good magnet urls to Disney’s whole collection?
Google this hash info: EF4211584F37CA70A4B1A2E47E7E833C79ABACBA
Jesus… You’re not wrong. That’s fucking crazy. You’re NOT wrong. Wtf is wrong with my country?
Would that break the ToS if I had a trial previously?
Yes and Disney will get very mad 😠😠
Think of the shareholders!!
Disney allowed to kill your spouse because you watched the mandalorian
Not the worse trade off. As long as we aren’t including Season 3.
The dark arts of the mouse are a pathway to legal techniques some consider to be… unnatural.
People don’t realize how important the outcome of this court case will be.
Man, america is wild place. Do you have any laws there?
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And laws that do protect the little guys get ignored by our right-wing courts. For instance, the courts quit enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act because, in the words of Scalia, “it makes no economic sense.”
Only the ones that are written for and protected by corporations. Everything else is the wild Wild West.
Most Americans would be offended by your comment, and that’s why we don’t have nice things. We’re very, and I can not stress this enough, VERY stupid.
It’s the law that the businesses get to screw you.
Oh yeah and every infant is assigned an assault weapon at birth.
Oh yeah and every infant is assigned an assault weapon at birth.
Man, here voenkom has to find you and give you povestka to assign you assault rifle.
It’s gonna be nuts.
It’s certainly going to cause a reaction.
It will likely be dismissed as Disney wasn’t the company responsible for staffing or managing the restaurant.
Which sucks, because I desperately want to see Disney take another massive L in the spotlight of the mainstream news cycle.
Piracy is the safe option then. Got it.
All it takes is one free trial. They got me, it’s over.
Piracy, watching through a friend, BluRays & DVDs, hard copies & actually owning something as opposed to…perpetually renting access, owning nothing & being happy about it.
How can a streaming service agreement apply to a restaurant
in a park?Wasn’t even in a park. The restaurant is in a separate mall. No ticket needed.
A mall owned and operated by Disney, with Disney branding everywhere, and store names heavily influenced by Disney properties, like “BB Wolf’s Sausage Co.”, and where “Guest Services” is managed by Disney, and the property rules are Disneyworld’s property rules.
That has nothing to do with whether it was actually in a park though, in which case one could argue about accepting terms based on a park ticket purchase. Since it’s not in a park, and needs no ticket, that shouldn’t apply.
Also, since you want to talk about branding, Raglan Road is a very well known street in Dublin, Ireland. It’s not really Disney-related, just Irish. Heck, looking into it a tiny bit more, the pub seems like it might even be independently owned and operated, not actually owned or operated by Disney at all. Their website doesn’t even mention Disney anywhere on it that I can find, which would lead one to assume it’s not actually Disney- related. It just happens to be located in a space operated by Disney. In which case I don’t think Disney would be liable at all anyway for an independent business, which seems a bit confusing why their lawyers wouldn’t just go that route instead, unless part of the agreement to be there is to be covered by Disney’s legal team.
If it is under the Disney umbrella, I’d bet that Disney World, Disney Springs, the Raglan Road Irish Pub, and Disney+ are all legally separate companies. They may be wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company under their umbrella, but technically separate companies. Legally, this matters a lot, even if it’s all under the Disney brand. Even if we don’t really care about that distinction as consumers.
If it is under the Disney umbrella, I’d bet that Disney World, Disney Springs, the Raglan Road Irish Pub, and Disney+ are all legally separate companies.
Probably, but is a customer expected to know that? What if you’re inside Disney World itself and you’re injured on the It’s a Small World ride, and then Disney says “oh, that’s not us, that’s owned and operated by ‘It’s A Small World LLC’”.
Part of the attraction of the whole Disney Springs area is that it’s under the Disney umbrella. As a visitor, you know that the company is going to keep everything clean, make sure that everything is up to high standards, etc. You’re probably going to pay a bit more to go to a store / restaurant there than a typical strip mall, but in exchange you get part of the Disney experience. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that that will also include restaurants that produce high quality food and that ensure that someone’s allergy needs are met.
FWIW, I don’t think the judge is going to go for it. Disney’s lawyers are the most bloodthirsty son of a bitch lawyers on Earth, but just because they make the argument doesn’t mean the court will accept it.
This is why those ToS are 71pages long. I don’t think there are many good judges out there anymore, but I hope the one that reviews this case goes absolutely ape-shit on Disney. There is a legal tradition of harsh punishments for criminals in examplar cases to set detterents to future crimes. The same needs to be done to reel in these corporations.
It probably won’t.
Disney said late Wednesday that it is “deeply saddened” by the family’s loss but stressed the Irish pub is neither owned nor operated by the company. The company’s stance in the litigation doesn’t affect the plaintiff’s claims against the eatery, it added.
“We are merely defending ourselves against the plaintiff’s attorney’s attempt to include us in their lawsuit against the restaurant,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.
For some reason that word “merely” just gets right under my skin. Like they KNOW it’s peak slimy, but they are just trying to do their job, man.
…Which is to protect the company at the expense of anything else: Reason, decency, consumer rights…
Honestly, isn’t them invoking the arbitration clause a direct admission of guilt? Had they just came to court and said “we have nothing to do with it” they might’ve just gotten away with it. Like this, they literally drag themselves into the suit and say you can’t sue me. Not a good look.
The way these big firms work is they make a bunch of almost contradictory arguments and you have to show they’re all false in order to win the law suit.
So it’ll look like:
- I didn’t do it.
- Even if I did do it you can’t prove it was me.
- Even if you can prove it was me I wouldn’t be liable.
- Even if I was liable this has to be settled by arbitration.
So you have to get through arguments 4 and 3 first, to show that it’s worth the court trying to find out what happened. Then they’ll fight you tooth and nail on points 1 and 2 later.
No, it isn’t. It’s saying, look, we had nothing to do with this because it was outside of our reasonable control, and even if we were somehow in control of this independent entity, this is the wrong venue because they agreed to this arbitration clause.
Moreover, per another article on NPR, “Disney says Piccolo agreed to similar language again when purchasing park tickets online in September 2023. Whether he actually read the fine print at any point, it adds, is “immaterial.”” In other words, he agreed to arbitration when he bought the ticket to Disney World, and it was while at the park, at an independent restaurant, that Ms. Tangsuan had a fatal allergic reaction.
Is that arbitration agreement reasonable? Personally, I lean towards no, but that’s mostly because arbitration is almost always in favor of the corporation. If it was truly a neutral process? Then yeah, I’d mostly support it, because it’s pretty easy for a defendant like Disney to bury any single plaintiff. (OTOH, it makes class action suits much harder.) Is it even valid, since it’s the estate that’s suing Disney, rather than her husband, and the estate didn’t exist when the tickets were bought and so couldn’t have agreed to the terms? Hard to say.
Yeah. “I didn’t kill her. But even if I did, here’s my get out of jail free card.”
The problem is just going to court and saying “we have nothing to do with it” is both expensive and can end up with them going to trial. If they believe they have nothing to do with the incident, this is their easiest route.
Not trying to defend a big corp like Disney (they have plenty of money and can easily cover it), but I was just involved in a suite brought against me and in the end even though it would have been an “easy win” for us, it still would have cost us more money to fight it out in court than it was to just settle. And that’s assuming the trial went our way which is never a guarantee.
I sincerely hope this shit blows up. May corporations providing “free” services forever be associated with literal devil’s contacts. Piracy is no longer just about sticking it to the man, it’s about freedom!
It would cost Disney literally pocket change to compensate the widower, but instead they rather spend hundred of thousands of dollars for lawyers and legal fee to fight it.
Not to mention how abhorrent it makes the “family” company look.
It also sends a message that if you ever use a Disney product then they’ll use that as an excuse to deny you your legal rights.
They’re using this chance since they know they can easily dispute it to try and set precedent for terms and services being used in situations that don’t make sense.
The judge will probably slap it down and they can still say that they don’t have anything to do with the restaurant and just walk away free, but it’s worth trying cause there’s plenty pro corpo judges now a days.
Did you mean “pocket changes” like “yay new pockets” or “pocket change” like “a little money”?
You said “literally” so I’m thinking they’re paying in linen swatches.
You probably think you’re clever but being pedantic is just being insufferable about stuff everyone else understood from context. That doesn’t make you clever, that just shows everyone that you need to be seen as clever.
You’re getting downvotes, but I for one applaud your manic pedantry!
It’s not pocket change to kill a doctor, quite the opposite. They earn very well, she will be very well compensated.
You know how much Disney is worth or their annual profit?
Even something like 10 millions is just cost of business or a rounding error to Disney.
10mill settlement. Yeah nah. add zeros.
Give me one example, in the entire history of mankind, a settlement for 1 live loss worth 100mil or more.
Idk what perfect world you came from, but in this fucked up world we’re living in, a human life ain’t cost that much.
Every single life insurance contract for a doctor
Meanwhile, even though D+ wants to apply their TOS to the theme parks, if you buy a D+ gift card, those funds cannot be used at any of the theme parks lol.
I can’t believe this is even a fucking thing
There’s no way this gets dismissed, right? The precedent this would set would be unimaginable…
I dunno, it depends on how many supreme court justices disney can afford I guess.
Now that Google is officially an Illigal monopoly, can Disney be next?
You really think Disney has a monopoly on evil?
A monopoly on evil no, a monopoly yes
I’m a bit confused here; what have they got a monopoly on?
A monopoly is a business with no viable competitors. But Disney has at least one or two competitors in pretty much everything they do.
So does Google, but it’s still a monopoly due to how they prevent smaller competitors from challenging the status quo.
Technically they have a monopoly on all their intellectual property (characters, star wars, marvel, pixar etc.)
But every company has a “monopoly on their intellectual property.” That’s just how that works and has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
As I said, technically a monopoly.
Fox + ABC is pretty big, but I don’t see Disney being the same as a Google or Microsoft monopoly.
Please. You are correct but you need to be informed and eloquent about it. Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices,” according to the most recent judge to rule against them (it was a 270 page ruling so I can’t blame you for not reading it).
Intellectual property rights do not a monopoly make. Unfair practices (like requiring webpages to conform to a new standard like google amp or not get boosted in search) make the monopoly.
How the fuck is it not punishable to write stuff into those contracts that contradict the law (obv. i mean this past a certain company size). Like for real.
Edit: Typo
I don’t know what the exact agreement here is, but such things are very often not enforceable. You can’t have someone sign their rights away. You can have them sign the document, but that document will be worthless in court and will not be respected. Those are more to scare people and discourage them from suing the company.
not enforceable
I mean sure, but writing agreements that contradict the law, at least in some of the more egregious cases, should really be actively punishable.
Those are more to scare people and discourage them from suing the company.
And this is why.
Yea, i am not so amused by the scaring people part. That is my problem here.
I’m not exactly sure that it DOES contradict the law, which is the problem.
My hope for this case is that it sets the precident of crushing their bullshit terms of forced arbitration before this happens again and deems terms like these unenforcable. To date, I’m not aware of anyone challenging this in court - meanwhile every company in the country is adding terms like these to their software agreements. So let’s throw this shit out for good.
Disney winning sets a precedent that will ultimately lead to vigilante justice by necessity.
If Disney wins, then our “justice” system does not work and cannot be trusted, thus leading people to doing what they need to just to survive when every company starts using that clause to prevent us from holding them responsible for anything at all.
And if that’s the case, I guess I need to dig out my mask and cape, and get back to work as a crime fighter.
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The issue is the agreement is written in their favor. You give up your rights, but they don’t. I’d have to read it to be sure, but I’d be fairly confident in saying that it’s going to be written to favor them.
Yeah, it certainly has the potential to go sour too. And if they were shopping around for favorable courts, that could be more likely than I would hope. Because to your point, our justice system does not actually work particularly well as it turns out. If the highest court in the land is so corrupt, all these little courts with even less visibility and oversight scare me.
I’ve actually wanted to write a story like this;
Have an ultra-brutal “antihero” character like Punisher, who does extremely violent shit to many “only slightly evil” parties. Each time, as part of their calling card, they leave behind a message to the effect of “We do not have a fair court system, and so I am creating one.” Biggest victims include judges, but not many lawyers - and they aim for an end result where large organizations don’t try to lobby their way out of problems, but instead argue them on true merits in court.
I was being general, didn’t write that i suppose. I am also refereing to companies trying to void warranties for no legal reason etc. There’s plenty of contradictory agreements out there.
Edit: Typo
I really hope a politician bans those “Class Action Waiver” and “Revoking Right to Arbitration” riders that are getting put into everyone’s Term and Conditions contracts. We should have the right to band together if a corporation fucks us over and this is ridiculous.
The way to handle the class action waiver is for all the would-be class action lawsuit plaintiffs to file individual lawsuits. Companies will realize pretty quickly why they do, in fact, want to only have one lawsuit to contend with instead of several thousand or million.
Not everyone has funds for a lawyer or time to get it done. Sueing someone in this country is complicated and expensive
Theoretically, everyone’s supposed to have right to self-representation. If some enterprising individual helps them to forego their need for a lawyer, and gives lengthy instructions on all the right forms, even if only 40% of the participants do it correctly, it could be a big hassle for them.
Of course, the other issue is that it would be a big hassle for the courts.
I’m aware how inaccessible civil court is for many people. While not addressing the time aspect, plenty of lawyers will work on contingency. Hurting a companies bottom line is what they understand the most.
Now THAT is bad PR. Wow. Going to be hard to top it.
The thing has been popping up in newspapers all over the World.
It’s bad PR for Disney and outside the US, it’s bad PR for the US also.
It’s hard to believe that they decided to take their stand on a case destined to be as high profile as this one. What a monumental misstep. But I hope they stick to their guns now, and that precident is set that stops this practice dead in its tracks.
Well, if they don’t do it now it sets a precedent that you can sue them. They don’t want that happening.
Not precident in the legal sense, but you’re right - if they back off of this defense and agree to take it to court, they’ll be fielding way more of these potentially because there will be blood in the water.
As a person who owns Disney stocks, I would just like to say:
Pay up, bitches!
Have you considered stopping?
Or shorting it, when I expect it to go down in price, thereby getting more money out of them.
