Disney Declassified: Tales of Real Life Disney Scandals, Sex, Accidents and Deaths (19 page)

Making A Mint Off The Mouse

In February of 1985, Disney and the video rental chain, The Wherehouse, paid two toddlers a combined $10,000 after the boys watched the Disney video
Silly Simplicities
and hardcore pornography had been spliced into the video.

One of the responsibilities of being a homeowner is accountability. If someone slips at your house or your dog bites them, there’s a good chance you’re going to be sued. Mickey’s house is no different. Theme park owners have a tremendous amount of liability and responsibility. Inviting the public onto private property that can be the setting for thrills and spills are also the invitation for lawsuits. Naturally, Disney has seen their share of spills, as much of this book has outlined. Spills usually lead to the courtroom, and no one has been there in respect to theme parks and entertainment, more than Disney.

Some of the lawsuits over the years have been more than justified as seen in Chapter Two. Others have been quite frivolous, and Disney has experienced them all. There was once a lawsuit at Disneyland in 1959 by a woman who sued the park over her traumatic experience riding the Matterhorn. The woman claimed she would have never went on the ride if she knew it was a roller coaster, as roller coasters scare her. There was another lawsuit filed in the 1970s when a person taking a seat on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride got wet. Then there was the case from 2004 when someone sued Disneyland for discrimination because they offered cheaper tickets to nearby residents (the Resident Salute Program gave locals an $8-10 discount).

As you can well imagine, these lawsuits didn’t get very far in the legal system. In fact, many lawsuits against Disney don’t advance to the courtroom, and when they do, Disney is usually victorious. Disney’s high winning percentage has to do with many factors. Oftentimes they win because they aren’t negligent and other times it’s because Disney is detailed, efficient, and diligent with their cases, and here and there, well, it’s because some jurors love Disney. There was one case where a juror commented that her fellow jurors were very pro-Disney. During their deliberations, her fellow jurors commented that it would be terrible to ruin the park's pristine safety record, despite a man losing his finger.

Disney apparently feels they need to be proactive and diligent legally. Our society can be quite litigious and they need to protect Mickey’s deep pockets. The diligence and attention to detail the company has mastered in providing entertainment to billions of people for nearly eighty years is also seen with their legal team. Disney has admitted they do maintain accountability for their incidents and accidents, under certain situations. “When a complaint has merit, The Walt Disney Company often settles the case but the company will very assertively fight cases it views as frivolous,” said Disney spokesman, Ray Gomez.

Sometimes those settlements have been as cheap as a few theme park tickets or Mickey memorabilia. Participants in cases that aren’t settled out of court can expect to be followed, taped, and thoroughly investigated by Disney. In certain cases Disney has interviewed parents, children, family members, employees, co-workers, and anyone else they can get access to; depositions aplenty! Combine those interviews with a top-tier legal team and bevy of experts or physicians and Disney will bring the case to a conclusion or as one attorney who battled Disney in the courtroom noted, “It’s like suing God in the Vatican”.

On the off chance that Disney does lose a case, they are trying to work with lawmakers to curb their awards to victims, at least in Florida anyway. In 2013, Disney teamed up with supermarket behemoth, Publix, to lobby lawmakers in the state to cut the size of civil-lawsuit awards. The companies are hoping lawmakers will rewrite the way medical damages are determined, if a business in the state is found responsible for an accident.

As a global powerhouse with a portfolio as diverse as Disney’s, their countless brands, enterprises and profitability make them a great target and constant participant in the United States legal system. Some of Disney’s time spent in the courtroom is unrelated to their theme parks. The company is sued on a myriad of levels, white-collar issues, harassment, copyright infringement, shorting royalty checks; if you can dream it, they’ve been a part of it. This chapter chronicles some of the more interesting lawsuits brought against Disney over the years, across their entertainment spectrum.

When Michael Eisner stepped down as Disney’s head mouse in 2005, he amassed over $1 billion in salary, stock options and bonuses during his twenty-one-year tenure. During his time, he was the catalyst for Disney’s revenue increase of $1.5 billion in 1984 to $30.75 billion in 2004, by way of adding seven new theme parks, a television network, radio stations, hotels, cable channels, a cruise line, and a slew of other enterprises. Eisner’s personal wealth paralleled his companies and in the world of big business, it seemed justified.

During his reign, it appeared as though Eisner had the golden touch. His successes far outweighed his failures; at least financially. There was one fiduciary move, however, that caught the eye of not only the media but of Disney shareholders. The Eisner golden touch felt the sting of a golden parachute.

 In 1995, super agent, Michael Ovitz, was one of the biggest names in Hollywood, and Eisner wanted him to come work for Disney. Ovitz resigned from the talent agency he founded and joined Disney as president of the Walt Disney Company. Ovitz was Eisner’s right-hand man and second in charge. After a tumultuous year working together, it was clear the two men couldn’t helm the company together.

Clearly Eisner wasn’t going anywhere, so the other Michael would have to go. Ovitz was relieved of his duties as of January 2007 and took with him a parting gift of roughly $140 million for fourteen months of employment. Pretty good work if you can get it.

Disney shareholders were outraged. Seventeen of them filed suit against both Disney and Eisner. They claimed Disney and their directors should have never hired Ovitz and then fire him so quickly. The golden parachute he received was excessive and they demanded the money be returned to the company; roughly $38 million in cash and another $100 million in stock.

The case bounced around the legal system, and by 2005, just a few months before Eisner left the company, judges ruled Ovitz could keep the money. It was determined that the money was in place and part of the initial contract he signed to come aboard. $140 million for fourteen months work, it certainly makes Eisner’s $1 billion for twenty-one years seem well deserved.

In April of 2000, Disney faced another multi-million-dollar lawsuit involving a former executive of their company, this time from the ex-employee's estate. Robert was a senior vice-president at Disney Motion Pictures and Television. He was responsible for overseeing the creation of trailers for movies and television advertisements.

In May of 1994, Robert died from AIDS-related complications. Three weeks before his passing, while in the hospital, a Disney executive paid him a visit and asked him to sign away his pension, stock options and any deferred bonuses, worth roughly $2.8 million. Some of the higher-ups at Disney believed Robert was taking kickbacks from vendors and allowing them to overbill for services. This mismanagement was to the tune of $5.7 million. Sanford Litvack, Disney’s chief of corporate operations, approached Robert on his suspicions. Litvack claimed Robert admitted, in 1993, he took $60,000 in payoffs. There was a second claim from another vendor that Robert was paid over $160,000 to secure more work from Disney. Litvack knew Robert was dying and decided not to fire him or expose him to authorities for taking kickbacks.

He allowed him to keep his job and stay on the payroll so he could maintain his company healthcare benefits. In the effort to keep his benefits and not be exposed to the police and public, Disney sent someone to Robert to have him waive his rights to future money, which he did. After his death, Robert’s estate, led by his father, sued Disney for their actions.

The estate claimed Robert was a dying man, was unsure of what he was signing, and was pressured into the situation. There were no witnesses and they had no rights to ask him to waive away his rights to future monies. In April of 2000, a jury in California agreed with Robert's family's claims. The waiver Disney had him sign on his deathbed was deemed invalid.

Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom features the popular attraction; It’s Tough to Be a Bug! The attraction, inspired by the Disney movie
A Bug's Life
, describes the arduous task of living as an insect. In the mid 1990s, bugs weren’t the only ones having trouble in their day-to-day lives at Walt Disney World. It was also tough to be a firefighter for the park, male or female.

The 1990s saw the Reedy Creek Fire Department (Reedy Creek is basically the governing body of the land in and around the Walt Disney World property that Disney set up back in the 1960s) hit with three sexual harassment lawsuits from their firefighters, two cases from men and one case from women. The first case on the Disney docket was known around Florida courts as the “Sphincter Case” - lovely name, I know.

In 1996 and 1997, two male firefighters filed nearly identical sexual harassment cases against Disney’s Reedy Creek Fire Department. The men, John and Ernest were veteran firefighters. At the time, John was a member of the fire department since 1988 and Ernest since 1982. The two men claimed for years they were subjected to hazing and harassment by their fellow firefighters.

The two men claimed the abuse persisted for over a decade at three different firehouses. The abuse came in the form of sphinctering or sphincter viewing and pancaking or fullering. So what do these lovely terms entail? Well, sphinctering was when the two men were physically restrained, often times handcuffed, had their pants and underwear pulled down and had their anus exposed to a group of their peers that would watch and cheer on the abuse. After they were paraded around like this in front of their co-workers, they then had pens, pencils, pocketknives, or penlights inserted into their anus. If the men fought or resisted this torture, the objects would be forced in.

Pancaking or fullering was when the victims were forced to the ground and the firehouse's largest firefighter would jump on top of them. The rest of the firehouse would then follow and jump on top of him; hopefully all foreign objects were removed prior to this act.

In all seriousness, the pancaking oftentimes would cause injury to the men on the bottom of the pile. Each of the men complained repeatedly to various leaders in the fire department and even to Reedy Creek officials. Very little was done to stop the harassment, in some cases, the harassment got worse after the men were reprimanded.

In 1995, Disney and Reedy Creek finally acknowledged the issue. They hired an investigator from the Orlando Fire Department to interview firefighters in the various houses to see if these allegations were true, although later in court, they would deny they hired the investigator for this specific purpose.

After interviewing thirty-five witnesses, the independent investigator concluded that the two men were subjected to this abuse, along with three other men. Multi-million-dollar lawsuits ensued from both men. Before the cases went to trial, settlements were reached, and in typical Disney fashion no terms were released.

The last sexual harassment case with Walt Disney World’s firefighters involved three women. The ladies claimed some of the male firefighters put up vulgar and nude pictures of women throughout the firehouses. They would even go as far as making vulgar comments about their genitals and would obstruct them from receiving proper training. They were routinely chastised by the men, telling them their place should be in the kitchen or barefoot and pregnant. When the women would complain to the fire department managers, nothing was done to curb it and at times they felt the managers actually encouraged the behavior.

The three women filed a sexual harassment lawsuit highlighting all the low points of their days at Reedy Creek Fire Department. They claimed the environment was hostile and very much anti-woman.

In October of 1996, as the jury was selected on a Friday before the case was to commence on Monday, Disney settled out of court with the three women; they were seeking $5 million in their case. 

A handful of the lawsuits Disney battled within the past twenty years or so actually originated with the big cheese himself, Walt. In June of 1955, Disney released the animated movie
Lady and the Tramp
. The romantic cartoon about a couple of pooches featured the voice of popular actress and singer Peggy Lee.

Peggy voiced the characters Darling, Si and Am, and Peg. Peggy also contributed to writing some of the songs featured in the movie. Her royalty for songwriting was a split of $1,000 with the other writer. Her voice work and singing earned her another $3,500, not bad for a contract signed back in 1952. Fast forward thirty-five-plus years and enter the popularity of the home VCR. In 1987, Disney released the movie on videocassette. The movie sold millions of copies its first year and Peggy wanted her cut. 

In November of 1988, she sued Disney for $25 million. She claimed her contract entitled her to a portion of the proceeds. In her contract, it stated Disney does not have the right to make “phonograph recordings and/or transcriptions for sale to the public, thus the movie was released without her consent and Disney is in breach of contract." The case went to court and in April of 1991, a jury ruled in Peggy’s favor. They awarded her $3.8 million, almost ten percent of what Disney made in sales from the videocassette.

 About a year after the
Lady and the Tramp
case was filed, Mary Costa, an opera singer and voice of Princess Aurora in Disney’s 1959 release of
Sleeping Beauty
filed a nearly exact court case. This one they settled out of court days before the start of the trial, but not before Disney tried to pull a legal fast one. Mary, too, signed her contract in 1952. She was paid $100 a day for her work on the film. In 1986, Disney released
Sleeping Beauty
on home video; her lawyers estimated Disney grossed $60 million with the videotape's release, and Mary was due a cut under the same argument Peggy’s legal team utilized.