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.
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.
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?
Disney allowed to kill your spouse because you watched the mandalorian
The dark arts of the mouse are a pathway to legal techniques some consider to be… unnatural.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’re getting downvotes, but I for one applaud your manic pedantry!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I know this isn’t the point at all, but it must suck to be the chef in charge of that kitchen right now. Like you’ve already made a mistake that’s killed a doctor and now it’s become massive international news…Yikes!
Yknow what else sucks? Dying.
Also I wonder if the staff could be charged with involuntary manslaughter
Lets focus our contempt in the correct direction. You have no idea if the wait staff even interacts with the kitchen let alone if they were trained properly, or trained wrong.
Well that’s the entire thing, they weren’t properly trained on allergens and how to deal with them. The couple asked, asked again, and when the food came out, asked a third time because it wasn’t marked allergen free.
This lands square at the feet of Disney because this, undoubtedly, was a measure of cost-cutting. Disney is notorious for this type of behavior in recent years. As with any capitalist enterprise, the con goes: over-deliver and build up a rep, deliver on that rep to a T, nothing more nothing less, and then the coup de grâce. Cash in on that goodwill by abusing, tightening purse strings, sacrificing customer satisfaction and often safety.
The question we’re all gonna find out the answer to in the coming years is how much goodwill does Disney have, exactly. How long can they milk their customers, turning them away from future visits by making their park and product experiences so expensive while being underwhelming that people go into debt to experience them, and so abusive of the customer/vendor relationship that people leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
I’m hoping to watch the entire edifice fucking crumble and burn.
I’m not defending Disney and I cannot speak to this situation. My experience at the restaurants in Disney Springs was very good with respect to allergens. When we inquired if a meal could be made without certain ingredients for allergy reasons, the wait staff left and found experienced staff to assist us. At one of the restaurants, the chef came out clarified the ingredients in the meal we inquired about, clarified which ingredients were a problem, and they verified (without prompting) the ingredients we asked be omitted had been omitted when the meals came out. We were quite satisfied with our experience. We had been avoiding nearly all restaurants up until that point and felt some relief with how it turned out.
Don’t worry, capitalism is the death kneel of humanity. Global warming will end our species as a byproduct of a few thousand people living like gods.
Dunno how it is there but where I live you can’t be charged for a legitimate fuck up at work like that. Only if it was malicious
In plenty of places, if you work with food and handle allergens then either you need to flag very visibly that you can’t guarantee separation of allergens, or you can be on the hook for accidents too.
Your job is to serve food. If your food was bad and you said is wasn’t, that’s negligent. Ignorance isn’t a defense when it’s your job.
Right to Sue is a right. Arbitration clause is a contractual obligations.
They should be able to sue regardless of being contractually obliged to seek arbitration. Disney can sue them for violating the terms of the contract later, but nothing should hinder anyone’s right to seek justice.
I sure hope they not only lose, but get further punitive damages for even trying to pull this shit.
Suing for 50k. 50. K.
This feels so illegal. If it isn’t, it should be. Fuck Disney for this.
