Florida property insurers considering expanded use of binding arbitration to resolve damages disputes should consider a recent arbitration decision from Walt Disney Parks and Resorts: A response to a lawsuit against Disney that has made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic alleges that wrongful death damages claims arising from a five-year-old trial subscription to a Disney streaming service must be heard through arbitration outside of a courtroom.

In the Orange County, Florida, lawsuit, Disney argues that arbitration would help it avoid “high litigation costs.” The suit was filed by the husband of a woman who died in 2023 from an allergic reaction to food served at a Disney-affiliated restaurant.

Court documents from Orange County were not available online Wednesday, but the news site Law&Crime made the lawsuit and Disney’s request for arbitration available for download. The lawsuit argues that the woman, Kanokporn Tangsuan, had a severe allergy to dairy and nuts. When the family visited Disney World last year, they ate at the Raglan Road Irish Pub in the Disney Springs complex because it offered allergen-free food. According to court documents, Disney Parks leases the property to the restaurant company.

The woman, a doctor in New York, repeatedly asked the wait staff if the food could be prepared allergen-free. The staff repeatedly assured them that it could. But after she finished her meal, Tangsuan returned to her hotel room, began to have difficulty breathing and collapsed. She later died of an anaphylactic reaction resulting from an allergic reaction to the food, according to the lawsuit.

The husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, filed suit against Disney and the restaurant earlier this year. A hearing is scheduled for October.

Disney’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment from National Public Radio and other news organizations covering the case.

In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Disney’s lawyers argued that Piccolo signed up for a trial subscription to the Disney+ video streaming service in 2019. The fine print of the subscription agreement states that “any dispute between you and us, except for small claims, is subject to a class action waiver and must be resolved through individual binding arbitration,” Disney’s court documents state.

An agreement whereby Piccolo purchased tickets to the Disney theme park may have contained similar language.

Piccolo’s lawyers called Disney’s legal argument “absurd,” bordering on the surreal and fatally flawed in court documents. Disney is trying to deprive the family of their right to a public jury trial, the lawyers said.

“Even assuming that Ms. Tangsuan’s estate is bound by the arbitration clause in the Disney+ subscription agreement with Mr. Piccolo, the terms of the agreement make clear that Mr. Piccolo only potentially agreed to arbitrate claims relating to the Disney+ streaming service,” the detailed response to the motion to compel arbitration states. “The Disney+ subscription agreement establishes, on its face, that there was no agreement to arbitrate claims for damages against other Disney entities.”

The Tangsuan family is represented in part by Miami attorney Raoul Cantero, a former Florida Supreme Court judge who has been involved in other major litigation that could impact insurance benefits.

Photo: The Ragland Road Irish Pub at Disney Springs (Adobe stock images).