No, it isn’t. Their liability is appropriate. People place a high level of trust in Disney. That may seem strange to some of us, but I think among the general public, that’s true. So if an average person sees that statement about allergens on Disney’s website, and on a menu hosted on a Disney website, it’s reasonable to trust that statement is correct. And that makes Disney liable.
I’m not sure what you mean about if this would happen for Yelp. If you mean, would the plaintiff sue Yelp? If I were their attorney, I certainly would include them. If you mean people wouldn’t be outraged about the attempt to force the suit to arbitration…no, I think people would still be outraged about that. It probably wouldn’t get as much press, because who gives a shit about Yelp, but I don’t think that changes things much for the plaintiff. Except maybe they do end up in arbitration.
ETA: I just want to reiterate what my original point was. Of course, plaintiffs want to bring whoever has the deepest pockets into a lawsuit. However, you can’t just include a defendant because they have deep pockets. There still has to be some legal argument for that defendant’s liability. And my original point was that if the only connection Disney had to this incident was that they were the restaurant’s landlord, that would be insufficient to bring them into the lawsuit. Maybe you weren’t making that point, but others were, and everyone’s focus on saying “Disney is just the landlord, they don’t own or manage the restaurant” just rubbed me the wrong way because it doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant to this case. That’s all I was saying.
