NEW YORK - Months after a man sued Walt Disney Parks and Resorts over the death of his wife from a severe allergic reaction at a Disney World restaurant, the company responded with an argument that would keep the case from coming before a jury.
The matter should be settled by an outside arbitrator, Disney said in a legal filing, because the man had agreed to settle any disputes out of court when he signed up for a free trial of its streaming service, Disney+.
The man, Jeffrey Piccolo, sued this year, several months after his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, who was allergic to nuts and dairy, ate at the resort’s Raglan Road Irish Pub in Orlando, Florida, experienced a severe allergic reaction and died.
Tangsuan, who lived in Carle Place, New York, was a 42-year-old daughter of Thai immigrants and a family medicine specialist affiliated with NYU Langone Hospital Long Island.
Her husband is seeking damages over US$50,000, the minimum required to file in Florida circuit court, but his lawyers expect the actual damages to be much higher if the case is decided by a jury, they said.
In a motion to require that the matter be settled by an arbitrator, who would issue a binding decision, lawyers for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts emphasised that the Raglan Road is "an independently owned restaurant" and said that its relationship to Disney is that of “a landlord and tenant."
In any case, the lawyers said, when Piccolo signed up for a Disney+ account in 2019, using his PlayStation, and when he purchased tickets to Epcot on the Disney website in 2023, he "agreed to arbitrate 'all disputes'" against the company.
"Further litigation would only generate needless expenses and waste judicial resources," the lawyers argued in their filing.
In their response, filed this month, lawyers for Piccolo called Disney’s argument "fatally flawed," arguing that Piccolo had never signed an agreement with Walt Disney Parks. Even if he had, the lawyers argued that agreement would not extend to Tangsuan.
"Frankly, any such suggestion borders on the absurd," Piccolo’s lawyers wrote.
Piccolo had agreed to terms and conditions on the Walt Disney World website when he used the My Disney app to purchase tickets to the Epcot resort in September 2023. His lawyers said that those terms and conditions did not include a clause that mandated arbitration of disputes.
Disney's claim "is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience," Piccolo's lawyers wrote.
Ross Intelisano, a lawyer who regularly represents parties in arbitrations, called Disney's claim "a big stretch." He said the terms and conditions for Disney+ only apply to the streaming service and are limited to television-related issues.
Defendants tend to favour arbitration, Intelisano said, because it is private, it avoids a jury and arbitration panels typically do not grant large sums of punitive damages — something Piccolo's lawyers are expecting a jury to award. Intelisano said that a jury would be likely to be moved by what he referred to as "a terrible story."
"Typically, in a case like this, in a wrongful death case, a plaintiff always wants to be in front of a jury," he said. "So, it's not surprising that Disney would do whatever they can to try to get out of court."
Guests ride the Tiana's Bayou Adventure flume ride at Disney's Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, on June 3, 2024. (Photo: New York Times)
In a statement Wednesday, a spokesperson for Disney reiterated that Raglan Road was neither owned nor operated by the resort.
"We are deeply saddened by the family's loss and understand their grief," the statement said. "We are merely defending ourselves against the plaintiff’s attorney's attempt to include us in their lawsuit against the restaurant."
Tangsuan, her husband and her mother were visiting the resort Oct 5 when they stopped for dinner at Raglan Road, where Tangsuan told their server that she was severely allergic to dairy and nuts.
They ordered onion rings and items labeled "Sure I'm Frittered," "Scallop Forest" and "This Shepherd Went Vegan," dishes their server had assured them did not contain allergens. When the items arrived, they did not have flags in them marking them as allergen-free. Nevertheless, Tangsuan's server assured her the dishes were safe to eat.
She and her husband had chosen the restaurant, the complaint said, because Disney had advertised its focus on accommodating people with allergies at its resort.
Roughly 45 minutes after eating, Tangsuan, who had entered the Planet Hollywood outlet nearby, collapsed while struggling to breathe. She used an EpiPen and was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Both sides will present their cases at a hearing Oct 2, lawyers for Piccolo said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
