It now says the case “warrants a sensitive approach.”

Disney tried to force the case into arbitration by citing the agreement on the widower’s Disney Plus trial account.

Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial.

“With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” chairman of Disney experiences Josh D’Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. “As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”

  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    132·
    3 months ago

    Arbitration is an abomination, abused to quash the rights of regular people who could hardly afford to take a stand against the big guy in the first place.

    That a person can sign away their legal rights at all is a miscarriage of justice.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      181·
      3 months ago

      Arbitration, generally, is not a bad idea. It’s less formal and usually less expensive when you have a disagreement. It really is designed for, say, two friends who are going into business together and want to keep things friendly while giving each other the ability to seek an external arbitor.

      However, it’s our late stage capitalism that has made forced arbitration an abomination, with corporations seeking to limit their liability by making it unprofitable for individuals to seek legal remedies against very large corporations. Corporations that have the legal equivalent of nukes verses the average customer who has a peashooter.

      I’m at the point whenever I see these clauses to snail mail then my own terms and if they don’t react, I assume that my terms were accepted. I’ve been doing this now for the last few years and have yet to have a company shut off my service or reply back.

      • Null User Object@programming.dev
        6·
        3 months ago

        snail mail then my own terms and if they don’t react, I assume that my terms were accepted.

        I’m pretty sure you haven’t run this strategy by a lawyer. If you’ve actively agreed to their terms and they haven’t responded to your counter terms… How do you imagine a court is going to interpret that?

        • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          72·
          3 months ago

          I use their exact same language of “by continuing to allow access to the system, you agree to the terms.”

          I am not a lawyer but the way I see it, there is no downside.

          • if it’s accepted by a court, then I win
          • if it’s not accepted, then the language itself is now influx, opening the door for me or others to use the ruling to continue to chip away at forced arbitration and I’m no worse off than just accepting their terms
      • Glemek@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Do you sent via certified mail or something else that has proof of receipt, and how do you decide who at the company to send it to?

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        3 months ago

        However, it’s our late stage capitalism

        It’s not capitalism. It’s rent-seeking, which is what came before capitalism. The “Free Market” that Adam Smith talked about wasn’t a market free from regulations, it was a market free from economic rents, free from monopolies, etc. The big problems we’re seeing now aren’t because we have too much capitalism, it’s because the capitalism we have is shifting more towards rent-seeking, monopolies, artificial scarcity, etc. It’s basically feudalism. In a proper capitalist system you have competition. That’s the “free market”. If someone doesn’t like the decisions a business is making, they’ll switch to another one.

        Companies can only get away with the kinds of things Disney tries when they don’t have to worry about competition. In other words, it’s no longer a capitalist system, it’s a rent-seeking business. Disney is built around its intellectual property, and IP is nothing but rent-seeking. Nobody can compete with Disney and make a better Star Wars movie because Disney owns the rights to anything Star Wars related.