Corporate Power vs. Justice
About Disney’s Response to a Tragic Death
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Imagine this: you're at Disneyland in Orlando, having the time of your life. You sit down at one of the theme park's restaurants, and despite clearly telling the staff about your severe allergies to dairy and nuts, they serve you food that contains exactly those things. You get seriously sick.
This isn't just a “what if” story—it actually happened to a woman who tragically passed away because of it. Her husband, devastated, decided not to let this go. He's suing Disney for over $50,000 plus legal costs, accusing the restaurant of negligence. But here's where it gets twisted: Disney is taking advantage of a legal loophole in its terms of use. They say that when the husband signed up for a free Disney+ trial and bought their park tickets, he agreed to give up his right to sue the company in perpetuity and for any reason, and any disputes can only be resolved by arbitration.
The case sparked a debate about how big powerful companies play the game and how they can sidestep responsibility. So here we are. This is the world we live today; powerful corporations hold all the cards and are challenging our notion of justice.
We've got to remember—every power these corporations have, comes from us. We're the ones giving it to them. We just forgot that we gave it. And we forget that we can stop.
True that we are giving away our rights to corporations when we sign up voluntarily for all sorts of things. How do we stop doing this, though? how many of us read the long texts of small print? and even if we do, do we make full sense of what it means? Or do we stop signing up to offers altogether because we are aware of what we agree to? In this case, if the people involved had read the small print and if they had understood its implications, would they have thought of the eventualiry of something like this going wrong and would they have given up the offer of a trip to Disneyland? I severely doubt it. What we need is strong consumer pritection laws which would not allow corporations to use such exclusionary clauses and would give judges the power to strike them down if relied upon in court.