Signing Away Our Rights

Terms of Service agreements are all over the place these days, people are asked to agree to them before any service sign-up can be completed. These standard agreements were previously intended to protect companies providing the service(s) against frivolous lawsuits and protection from liability. Generally, the terms of service agreements that people were required to sign laid out the restrictions regarding a service or product and its intended use. Terms of service agreements have always been very long and wordy with a lot of complex language and phrasing that can confuse those who are not attorneys or familiar with legalese. Most people are accustomed to signing these agreements without fully reading them and most never had any issue later.

Corporations are aware of this fact and they are now using it to their advantage in very questionable ways. A recent case that hit the legal circuit involved Disney and the family of a woman who ate at a restaurant located in the Disney World resort. The restaurant staff assured the woman that the food she had been served was allergen-free. The woman had a very severe allergy to nuts and dairy but after being told several times the food was allergy-free, she began to enjoy the meal. The situation took a tragic turn quickly when the woman went into anaphylactic shock caused by the “allergen-free” food served to her. She passed away despite attempts to save her life. After this tragedy, her family filed a lawsuit against Disney because the restaurant that was faulted with the woman’s death was located on Disney property. Disney failed to ensure that the restaurant followed proper food handling procedures to prevent incidents such as this from happening.

Things took an interesting turn when Disney responded to the lawsuit by requesting it be thrown out. This was due to the woman’s husband signing a terms of service agreement that required all legal issues handled via arbitration, not through the court system. The terms of service agreement was signed in regards to a Disney + account free trial. It was unrelated to Disney World, aside from being owned by the same company. It was a completely different service than the resort services. Common sense would tell a person that any terms of service agreement signed would related only to the service(s) it is being signed regarding. But here Disney was trying to apply a Disney + terms of service agreement to the death of a guest at their resort in order to avoid being sued. After this story hit the mainstream media and people became outraged, Disney agreed to allow the lawsuit to move forward.

Now, there is a second case happening similar to this scenario, only this time involving Uber. In this newest case, a couple had called an Uber to pick them up and the driver ran a stop light. The car was hit by another vehicle and the couple suffered severe injuries due to the negligence of the Uber driver. Uber is requesting the lawsuit be dropped stating that because of the couple signing a terms of service agreement upon ordering from Uber Eats, they agree to resolve lawsuits via arbitration. Once again, there is an unsavory and unethical trend happening here. Uber Eats is a completely different service than Uber rideshare, however, because it’s the same company, Uber’s legal team is stating the terms of service cover all. The court in this case agreed with the Uber legal team and dismissed the couples case stating that they were required to work directly with Uber to resolve this case.

This is setting a dangerous precedent. These large corporations have their hands in several different types of businesses are forcing people to give up their right to sue because of obscure terms of service agreements. Previously, the different types of business were separated and corporations were not attempting to be this conniving and shady. Now it appears that these businesses are definitely looking for any loophole around taking responsibility for their actions. They are determined to get out of paying fair settlements for harms caused by using terms of service agreements. If something is not done to stop this blatant abuse of power by these corporations, people will be signing away their rights to sue for anything. Corporations will be able to manipulate and control how much they pay to people who they have wronged because the court will no longer hear the cases.

This is unacceptable and terrifying. Part of the protections that consumers have always had has been the ability to seek legal damages in the court of law when a company has committed a violation or caused harm. Now, if the corporation owns a streaming service or social media service, or any other type of service that requires a TOS be signed, they can use the arbitration clause to force the courts to drop the lawsuits. These corporations do not allow you to refuse to agree to the TOS agreements if you want to use the services they offer. Yet they are allowed to extend that TOS over to all of their services and products as a lawsuit protection cover-all. This cannot continue unchecked, but until something is done, user beware, when you agree to a TOS, you may want to ensure that you read it fully because it may block you from legal protection all around the board.

Originally published on Medium - https://medium.com/@lunaverity80/signing-away-our-rights-1ae440cded62

© 2024 Luna Verity