In October, Kanokporn “Amy” Tangsuan, a Long Island family-medicine doctor who worked at NYU Langone, went to Disney World in Florida with her husband Jeff Piccolo and his mother. During the trip, she and her husband stopped at an Irish pub–themed restaurant called Raglan Road for dinner. Tangsuan was allergic to dairy and nuts, and before she and her husband ordered, the doctor — who carried an EpiPen — asked a waiter whether any of the allergens were in her order: broccoli and corn fritters, scallops, onion rings, and a vegan shepherd’s pie. The waiter consulted with the chef, and then assured her that they could be made dairy- and nut-free.
About 45 minutes after Tangsuan ate, she went into an anaphylactic shock so severe her EpiPen was useless. She died soon after at a nearby hospital. In February, her husband filed a wrongful-death suit against the restaurant and Disney’s theme-parks division, seeking money damages.
The story of Tangsuan’s death, drawn from court filings, was swift and tragic. But it does not end there. Piccolo’s lawsuit is currently in danger of getting thrown out of court and locked down into private arbitration, where further details would likely never come to light. Disney has argued that Piccolo gave up his right to sue as far back as 2019 when he signed up for a free trial of Disney+ and again in 2023, when he agreed to terms and conditions on the company’s website to purchase tickets to the theme park.
Disney is not the only company to use arbitration clauses in its contracts, but it may have the most far-reaching consequences. About 193 million people subscribe to its streaming services, spread across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and the majority of those subscribers are in the U.S., where they are bound by the same kind of restrictions raised in Piccolo’s case. There are 58 million people a year who visit its theme parks, which surely shares a lot of overlap with subscribers. (To put that into context, there are about 110 million households in the U.S.) All these people may have given up their right to sue Disney, forever, even if the company is accused of being responsible for a family member’s death.
This is unlikely to be an accident of overzealous lawyers, but, instead, a deliberate corporate strategy to cut down costs and snuff out bad PR, said David Horton, a law professor at University of California, Davis, who has written extensively about the expansion of arbitration clauses. Arbitration has become far more common during the last 30 years, as the Supreme Court has ruled in several cases for a broad reading of the Federal Arbitration Act, which allows for the private resolutions. “This is something that is becoming more and more common,” Horton said. Consumers have found themselves unable to remove themselves from contracts they may have no recollection agreeing to — or, in some cases, only apply to them because one company bought another and assumed all their contracts — as courts have expanded the scope of when disputes can be arbitrated. “You are now not just agreeing to arbitrate any claim that you have against the company that stems from the contract that you just agreed to, but any claim whatsoever, and these clauses that cover every possible claim you could ever have against the company or its affiliates. They last in perpetuity. So they really are just the broadest possible arbitration clauses,” Horton said.
Disney claims that it does not own or operate the Raglan Road restaurant, while Tangsuan’s husband claims Disney controlled the menus and was responsible for the staffing. How much the House of Mouse was actually involved would undoubtedly be a key part of any fact-finding. “It’s really clear in this particular case why Disney would want to move the case from court to arbitration, because it’s going to be confidential,” said David Hoffman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a very bad reputational hit for the firm to cause someone to die by virtue of not taking directions at a Disney restaurant. So it’s obvious why they want to move into arbitration. The settlement value of the lawsuit goes to a fraction of itself.”
In Tangsuan’s wrongful-death case, Disney makes two different arguments for why the lawsuit should be taken out of public view, and they hinge on the different times the husband agreed to Disney’s terms of service. The weaker case may be the broadest one, when he signed up for the streaming service five years ago. “The language of the Disney+ arbitration clause seems to me makes this a very weak case for applying that clause to the dispute here,” said Christopher R. Drahozal, a contract law expert at the University of Kansas School of Law. “As the plaintiff argues, the clause by its terms seems to apply only to disputes related to the streaming service, not to what happens in a Disney park.”
The second time, when the husband bought tickets to Epcot, is narrower, Hoffman said. Piccolo had agreed to the Disney website’s terms of service, and then used those Disney websites to find a restaurant that could cater to his wife’s allergies. “Arguably, the nature of the claim is that you are liable because of what you wrote on your web page,” Hoffman said of Disney.
“We are deeply saddened by the family’s loss and understand their grief,” a Disney spokeswoman said in a statement on August 14. “Given that this restaurant is neither owned nor operated by Disney, we are merely defending ourselves against the plaintiff’s attorney’s attempt to include us in their lawsuit against the restaurant.”
Following the backlash to Disney’s position, the company said on August 19 they intend to revise their previous position.
“At Disney, we strive to put humanity above all other considerations. 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. As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court,” Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of Disney Experiences said in a statement.
