A man suing Walt Disney Parks and Resorts over his wife’s wrongful death is now facing a new legal obstacle: Disney is pushing to have the case dismissed and moved to arbitration, citing his previous Disney+ subscription.
According to court documents, Disney is arguing that the $50,000 lawsuit should be thrown out because the plaintiff, Jeffrey Piccolo, agreed to arbitrate any disputes with the company when he signed up for a one-month trial of Disney+ in 2019.
Disney’s legal team also contends that since Piccolo used the Walt Disney Parks’ website to purchase tickets for Epcot Center, the company is protected from legal action brought by the estate of his late wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, who tragically died due to a severe allergic reaction.
According to CNN in a legal filing responding to Disney’s claims, Piccolo’s lawyer Brian Denney called Disney’s argument “preposterous” and said that the notion that signing up for a Disney+ free trial would bar a customer’s right to a jury trial “with any Disney affiliate or subsidiary, is so outrageously unreasonable and unfair as to shock the judicial conscience.”
Walt Disney Parks and Resort is “explicitly seeking to bar its 150 million Disney+ subscribers from ever prosecuting a wrongful death case against it in front of a jury even if the case facts have nothing to with Disney+,” Denney wrote in court papers as a response.
Piccolo is seeking damages in excess of $50,000 pursuant to Florida’s Wrongful Death Act, as well as damages for mental pain and suffering, loss of companionship and protection, loss of income and medical and funeral expenses.
“We are deeply saddened by the family’s loss and understand their grief,” a Disney spokesperson said Wednesday. “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.”
In October 2023, Kanokporn Tangsuan, her husband Jeffrey Piccolo and Piccolo’s mother dined at Raglan Road Irish Pub in Disney Springs, which is part of the Walt Disney World resort in Florida.
They chose to eat at the restaurant, the lawsuit states, because they believed it would have proper safeguards against serving dairy and nuts to Tangsuan due to her allergies.
The waiter guaranteed the couple that certain foods could be made allergen-free, which the two confirmed “several more times,” according to the lawsuit. She also ordered a vegan fritter, scallops, onion rings and a vegan shepherd’s pie.
Although some of the food delivered lacked allergen-free flags, the waiter again assured them it was allergen free, but after dinner, Tangsuan, 42, went shopping in the Disney Springs area and began “suffering from a severe acute allergic reaction,” according to the lawsuit.
Despite self-administering an Epi-Pen, Tangsuan died from “anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system,” the lawsuit said, attributing the information to a medical examiner’s investigation.
