The Walt Disney Corporation is worth more than $175 billion dollars. With such deep pockets, Disney is a huge target for lawsuits. Sometimes, a plaintiff has a legitimate beef. In other instances, it’s hard not to laugh at the nonsense Disney lawyers face on a daily basis. Here are five of the weirdest lawsuits brought against Disney.
“Mickey’s parade ruined my life”
The above is an actual headline from TMZ. Disney absorbs a lot of lawsuits. Many of them are at least partially based in reality. Others require a bit of generous optimism to have any credulity at all. And then there are lawsuits like this one.
A gentleman named Michael S. visited Walt Disney World during the magical holiday season. Excited to take in everything the park had to offer, he stayed until well after dark. When the holiday version of the parade, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Parade, began, Mr. S wanted a great seat. He rushed to a new location to watch it.
Unfortunately, Mr. S didn’t watch where he was going. He tripped on a sidewalk and injured himself. Rather than laugh at the ridiculousness of his fall, the “victim” lawyered up. He claimed that the darkness required to host the parade caused his fall. Had the lights been on, he would have seen the step up on the sidewalk and avoided injury.
The clumsy fellow also blamed Disney cast members. He claimed that while several were around, none bothered to warn him about the incline. Why he felt it was light enough for them to see a stranger about to plummet to the ground but not bright enough for him to avoid the fall is a mystery.
Disney refers to these sorts of lawsuits as slip and fall claims. In the Better Call Saul vernacular, people like Mr. S are Slipping Jimmy types. They take a tumble and then get up rubbing some phantom injury. Then, they sue Disney and expect park officials to cut them a check right then and there.
The People vs. Winnie the Pooh
One of the most famous lawsuits of the 1980s involved a Disney cast member. While in character as Winnie the Pooh, this employee allegedly punched a little girl. Yes, it sounds horrible. The truth isn’t so simple, though.
The allegation from the parents was that their little girl innocently asked for a hug from Winnie the Pooh. For no apparent reason, the hunny-loving teddy bear slugged her. If you think that sounds suspicious, you’re correct.
Disney attorneys interviewed the cast member several times leading up to the trial. They felt comfortable enough with the person’s defense of his actions that they put him on the stand. In character.
Image: DisneyYes, a Los Angeles courthouse once featured the oddity of a person in a Winnie the Pooh costume walking into the room and heading straight to the witness stand. The opposing attorney famously muttered, “Oh gosh, we’re cooked now.”
I’m only slightly exaggerating the chain of events, too. In reality, the cast member, Robert H., testified about his mannerisms as a cast member in costume. The Disney lawyer working the case worried that the jury wasn’t buying his testimony. The attorney asked the cast member to come back in full Pooh gear.
When the man showed up in full mascot form, he reenacted the events that led to the incident. He described a child pulling on his outfit firmly. He turned around to see who was insistent, accidentally poking one of his fake bear arms into her ear during this movement. By acting out the events, the cast member proved that the costume simply wasn’t capable of being used as a weapon as the lawsuit claimed. It was soft and furry, just as you’d expect of Winnie the Pooh.
The jury required only 21 minutes to find for Disney.
Frozen…in Peru
Image: DisneyWhile I’d be hyperbolic if I said that Disney got sued every time they release a movie, it happens more often than you might think. Gary Goldman, a fairly well known Hollywood scribe who wrote Minority Report, is currently suing the company over Zootopia, which he claims was his idea. It’s at least a plausible argument. Screenwriters and producers have made similar claims about Cars, Monsters, Inc. and many other films in the Disney library.
Many of these assertions are absolutely ridiculous, though. Consider the case of Frozen, a film about two princesses separated when one of them develops the power to create ice out of thin air. The film also features shipwrecked parents, wise trolls that talk, a personable moose, and a living snowman whose favorite season is summer. It’s impossibly fake all the way around, right?
Image: DisneyWell, a living author claims that Frozen is HER life story and sued Disney to acknowledge their theft of her biography. A seemingly sane woman named Isabella T. sued Disney for $250 million (!!!), maintaining that they’d taken her story without her permission.
Isabella T. listed a grand total of 18 instances where she believed the story was too similar to her life to ignore. Note that the author was not a princess. She didn’t leave her sister to run off to a secret mountain fortress of her own construction. Also – and this seems rather important – Isabella T. grew up in Peru, where the average temperature is in the 70s. If somebody had been able to create snowballs out of thin air, people WOULD have noticed.
Don’t worry. Evil didn’t triumph here. A district court judge was emphatic in their ruling against the plaintiff. “The similarities she alleges between her memoir and Frozen are not substantial. The two stories are entirely different.” Note that I’m resisting every urge to make a joke about the author letting this one go.
An attempt to get the ultimate FastPass
How many times have you ridden Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror? No matter your answer, you probably can’t top the litigant in this lawsuit. A woman suffered an unfortunate incident involving endometriosis. The outcome from her multiple surgeries to address the issue was a tremendous amount of scar tissue in her abdomen and other parts of her body.
During a trip to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, she discovered a strange remedy for her afflictions. All the surgeries had left her in constant pain. When riding Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror, her body experienced the zero-gravity sensations followed by the immediate restoration of gravity afterward. This movement had an unexpected impact on her. It upended her scar tissue and thereby relieved her of pain.
Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror is many wonderful things, but this is the first time anyone has ever described it as a painkiller.
Due to its surprising health benefits, Tower of Terror became her favorite ride. Any time she felt the need to relieve her tension, she’d head to the Hollywood Tower Hotel. By her own account, she was riding down the elevator shaft as many as 50 times per day.
How was this possible? The sufferer procured a Guest Assistance Pass (GAP). It allowed her to cut to the front of the line. Alas, the sufferer was in tremendous pain on a regular basis. That can make a person grumpy. During an ill-considered moment, she got into a shouting match with a cast member. The employee felt that the victim was abusing her GAP privileges. She flipped out over the assertion, which is actually pretty understandable if it’s the only thing that lessened her agony. Alas, Disney has a zero-tolerance policy on such behavior and banned her from the park.
One tantrum cost the woman access to her favorite attraction, the one that literally eased her pain. What choice did she have? She sued Disney, demanding that they lift her ban from Hollywood Studios. She basically sought the ultimate FastPass, a chance to ride Tower of Terror whenever she wanted.
The elevator that doesn’t go up or down
Image: DisneySometimes, Disney builds illusions that are so good that they fool even con artists.
One of the rumors about Disney lawsuits that won’t die involves a Hydrolator. This piece of Disney theming was allegedly an elevator that would transport visitors at The Living Seas down to the depths of the ocean floor. Here, they’d witness sea creatures interact in their natural environment.
Anybody who knows anything about Epcot and The Living Seas knows the truth here. The Living Seas is a loving recreation of ocean habitation featuring one of the largest saltwater tanks ever constructed. It’s housed in a building that does NOT tunnel down into the Atlantic Ocean. To the contrary, the Hydrolator doesn’t go anywhere at all.
In an effort to add more believability to the underwater experience, Imagineers built a fake elevator system to enhance the illusion of deep sea exploration. A woman who wasn’t in on the joke sued Disney. She claimed that her eardrums burst during the underwater descent. What’s odd about this particular lawsuit is that Disney employees have discussed it for years, but nobody can find the original court documents. Even Snopes can’t prove or disprove its veracity.
Image: DisneyAs far as the legend goes, it’s the outcome that strains credulity. While this sort of made up lawsuit is certainly possible (Disney receives many of these each year), the alleged resolution is implausible. Supposedly, Disney took the jury members to the Hydrolator and demonstrated that it didn’t work, at which point the jurors quickly ruled in the company’s favor.
While I love the mental image of jurors scowling at the plaintiff in the wake of this demonstration, the reality is that an Imagineer’s court testimony would have had the same effect. The demonstration never would have been necessary, which is why I strongly suspect this story is based in some truth but has had myths added to it over the year.
Either way, you should take some Dramamine before the next time you ride the Hydrolator. And if you’re going to sue Disney for nausea, I should warn you that the Hydrolators haven’t existed for more than a decade. So, it’s not a smart lawsuit…but still no less ridiculous than the burst eardrums one.
David Mumpower is the author of the Disney Demystified series, which you can buy here.
