Business
Disney reverses course on wrongful-death lawsuit, agrees to let case proceed in court
![Disney reverses course on wrongful-death lawsuit, agrees to let case proceed in court Disney reverses course on wrongful-death lawsuit, agrees to let case proceed in court](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e6a2146/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7592x3986+0+538/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Faa%2Fa7%2F6830f975425aa9eb4ba72cbc86a6%2Fdisney-board-fight-40181.jpg)
Walt Disney Co. has now agreed to let a wrongful-death lawsuit proceed in court, a reversal from its previous stance that the case needed to go through arbitration.
Jeffrey Piccolo sued Disney in February, alleging that his wife died of a severe allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
The “unique circumstances” of the case warranted a “sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” Disney Experiences Chair Josh D’Amaro said in a statement released Monday night.
“As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court,” he said.
A court hearing scheduled for Oct. 2 to discuss Disney’s previous motion to toss the wrongful-death lawsuit was canceled Tuesday morning, according to court documents.
During a trip to the Disney Springs shopping complex in October 2023, Piccolo and his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, allegedly asked staff multiple times at the Raglan Road restaurant if the food Tangsuan ordered had dairy or nuts, which she was allergic to, according to Piccolo’s lawsuit. The couple were assured it did not, the lawsuit said.
Less than an hour after their meal, Tangsuan began having problems breathing and collapsed. She was taken to a hospital, where she later died. A medical examiner’s investigation found that Tangsuan died as a result of “anaphylaxis due to elevated levels of dairy and nut in her system,” the lawsuit said.
In a response filed in May, Disney said the lawsuit should be tossed because Piccolo had agreed to terms and conditions mandating arbitration in “all disputes including those involving The Walt Disney Co. or its affiliates” when he signed up for a Disney+ account in 2019, according to a court filing.
Disney said Piccolo agreed to those terms and conditions again when he purchased tickets for him and his wife to visit Epcot through the Walt Disney World website. Disney said the binding arbitration clause for the tickets applies to anyone he bought tickets for, according to court documents.
In a response to the May Disney filing, Piccolo’s attorneys argued that his wife’s estate, which did not exist at the time he purchased the tickets because she was still alive, did not agree to any legal terms or conditions.
Piccolo’s attorney, Brian Denney, said in an email Tuesday that his client would “continue to pursue justice” for his wife at the trial court level.
“Attempts by corporations like Disney to avoid jury trials should be looked at with skepticism,” he wrote.
Denney added that Piccolo hoped the publicity of the case would lead to “positive change to corporate food preparation policies and procedures.”
Piccolo is seeking at least $50,000 in damages, not including costs and post-judgment interest.
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Business
California legislators say new laws must protect farmworkers from extreme heat
![California legislators say new laws must protect farmworkers from extreme heat California legislators say new laws must protect farmworkers from extreme heat](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/e0285f4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6761x3550+0+480/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F51%2F5b%2F2dc9c48640c2be9232ac4f9e14a1%2F1350763-me-mexican-doctors-treating-farmworkers-day1-20.jpg)
State lawmakers, responding to a report that the agency charged with ensuring worker safety in California has sharply cut back on enforcement of outdoor heat protection laws, said new legislation is needed to protect employees amid escalating periods of extreme heat.
Their comments addressed an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and Capital & Main that found that field inspections by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, dropped by nearly 30% between 2017 and 2023. The number of violations issued to employers during that period fell by more than 40%.
“I’m incredibly disappointed, and I’m actually infuriated,” said Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), chair of the Labor and Employment Committee.
Ortega, whose committee has heard testimony from farmworkers accusing Cal/OSHA of not enforcing safety laws, said the agency has repeatedly offered the “same excuses” for failing to ramp up inspections as life-threatening heat waves have intensified across California in recent years.
Cal/OSHA said it does not comment on legislation, but the agency said previously that it will launch a new agricultural unit that will operate in cities across California and “significantly expand enforcement.”
State law requires employers to provide heat illness prevention training, which includes information on the signs and symptoms of heat illness and an employer’s legal obligations to provide water and break areas with shade as close as possible to workers.
Capital & Main — an investigative news organization — interviewed more than 40 farmworkers across California in recent months. Workers said they did not receive heat safety training from employers and were not aware of their rights under the law. Many said they often toiled in fields and orchards with no shade and at times without water provided by employers.
Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno), whose district includes fields and orchards in the San Joaquin Valley, said he will push for legislation that requires Cal/OSHA to create a new heat safety certification program for agricultural workers.
The training, which would be administered by the agency online, would ensure that workers know their rights and inform them how to call Cal/OSHA and file complaints if their employers fail to comply with the law, according to Arambula.
“We need to make sure that we’re receiving the calls and that people are empowered and know what their rights are,” he added, “and we need to have people who are there to receive the calls to make sure that we’re following up with inspections and finding violations.”
He said he will introduce his bill during the next year’s session of the Legislature. A similar bill did not make it out of committee during the current session after a difference of opinion arose among lawmakers over the best way to proceed with the legislation. The bill would have required the training to be offered in English and the top five non-English languages used by adults in California, as identified by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Ortega said that the Legislature has previously provided funding and other support so that Cal/OSHA could hire additional personnel to improve enforcement efforts. The agency has 141 unfilled positions, or a vacancy rate of 37%, in its enforcement unit, which oversees workplace safety inspections.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get to the number of inspectors that we need to get some real results, not in the time that we need it, which is now,” Ortega said.
She and others say they are supporting a bill by Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José), a former farmworker.
The bill, which is being considered by the Assembly, would promote compliance with the state’s outdoor heat regulations and ensure that workers are compensated and receive medical treatment if they suffer heat-related injuries while working for an employer who had failed to comply with the law. In cases where the farmworkers died, their families would be compensated.
Cortese was not available for an interview but said in a statement that the bill is needed because farmworkers are endangered by record-breaking heat waves.
“Farmworkers need a rapid response for heat-related injuries and illnesses,” he said. “Their families need support when faced with the worst kind of heat-related tragedy — the death of a loved one and breadwinner.”
This story was produced in partnership with Capital & Main and the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Business
Public employees cannot use labor law to sue employers, California Supreme Court rules
![Public employees cannot use labor law to sue employers, California Supreme Court rules Public employees cannot use labor law to sue employers, California Supreme Court rules](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/459a367/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7261x3812+0+514/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa9%2F96%2Fb87a4fc44b9ea169b67947ef2c0e%2F1381387-me-1205-california-supreme-court-justices-001-ik.jpg)
Public agencies in California are not subject to a controversial law that gives workers the power to sue their employers over alleged labor violations, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled.
In the unanimous decision issued last week in a case involving a large healthcare system in the Bay Area, justices on California’s top court also found that public employers are largely exempt from wage law giving workers the right to daily meal and rest breaks.
Taken together, the two prongs of the ruling significantly curtail the ability of public employees in the state to seek help from the courts in labor disputes. Advocates for workers criticized the decision, while others said it would provide needed protections for agencies against costly lawsuits and penalties.
“Public employers are getting hit with lawsuits that can be very expensive to defend,” said Brian P. Walter, an attorney. The decision “is beneficial for the public.”
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2021 by a medical assistant and nurse working at Highland Hospital in Oakland against Alameda Health System, which operates several hospitals and clinics. The workers alleged their employer frequently denied or discouraged staff from taking breaks to eat and rest, deducted half an hour of pay from each work day even if a worker didn’t take a meal break, and failed to keep accurate payroll records.
The suit sought civil penalties for those violations under the Private Attorneys General Act, which grants workers the ability to sue employers on behalf of themselves and other employees over allegations of wage theft and other workplace abuses.
The case delved squarely into the unsettled intersection of labor law and government agencies. Some provisions of California labor code are ambiguous on whether they apply to the public sector, while others clearly include public employees. For example, a new statute enacted in 2023, explicitly requires meal and rest breaks for public employees involved directly in patient care in hospital, clinic and other public health settings.
The court’s ruling, authored by Justice Carol A. Corrigan, clarified that the labor code only applies to public agencies when they are expressly included. The “plain language of the governing wage order … excludes public employers from most of the wage and hour obligations it places on private employers,” she wrote.
On the issue of the right of public employees to sue their employers, Corrigan said the Legislature did not intend government agencies to incur penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act. It would be strange for a public agency to have to pay out such penalties and attorney fees from taxpayer-funds, as “the result would simply rob Peter to pay Paul,” the ruling said.
PAGA allows workers to pursue civil penalties on the state’s behalf, with a quarter of any award going to the employees who brought the claim and the rest to the state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency to help fund its enforcement of labor rules.
In light of the ruling, state lawmakers could pass new legislation or amend the law to include government workers, the court said. Lawmakers, however, may be reluctant to revisit the act’s wording following a recent compromise that lessened penalties under the law to address long-running concerns from businesses that it left them exposed to potentially devastating rulings.
Some lower courts have upheld PAGA lawsuits by public employees in the past, but the top court’s decision prevents such rulings in the future.
The decision adds to a long history of “cutting public employees out of certain rights,” said Ari Stiller, attorney for the California Employment Lawyers Assn. Treating public employers as sovereign entities “hurts public workers,” Stiller said.
Stiller said the ruling is at odds with previous statements by justices arguing that PAGA is one of the most important statutes workers have available to them to enforce their labor code rights. Although unions representing public sector workers may be able to negotiate rights for workers similar to those provided by state laws, Stiller said, “that’s not a strong justification for depriving all public workers of those rights in the first place.”
Business
Column: Trump's Truth Social stock is circling the drain
![Column: Trump's Truth Social stock is circling the drain Column: Trump's Truth Social stock is circling the drain](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/3a3d8de/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7491x3933+0+531/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F67%2F51%2F9f0d4f3e47b89558bb00d49c71cd%2Ftrump-79353.jpg)
Hiding in plain sight in the first annual report issued by the parent company of Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform was a statement of inescapable, well, truth.
Issued, perhaps appropriately, on April 1 by Trump Media and Technology Group, the report said: “The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Trump were to suffer.” This was cited as a “risk factor” in holding the company’s stock.
So here we are. Since July 21, when President Joe Biden ended his campaign for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to run against Trump, the stock has been spiraling toward oblivion.
TMTG may lack any meaningful remedy if President Donald J. Trump minimizes his future use of Truth Social.
— Trump Media and Technology Group acknowledges the limits of Donald Trump’s duty to use his own social media platform
From then through Tuesday, shares of the company bearing Trump’s initials (DJT) as its ticker symbol have lost nearly 39% of its value. (The broad stock market as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gained almost 2% over the same time span.)
The shares have gained in daily value only five times during that period, and lost ground on 17. The shares closed Tuesday at $21.42, down 82 cents or 3.71%, following a slide of 3.56% the day before.
In the context of the grand sweep of DJT’s history as a publicly traded company, that’s not so remarkable. Measured from its closing price of $57.99 on March 26, when it went public, the stock is down about 63%. Measured from its peak of $79.38, which it reached that day before pulling back, the loss is 73%. Choose which of these calculations you wish; either one fits the dictionary definition of “ugly.”
It’s certainly possible that DJT will have recovered some or all of its daily decline by the end of Tuesday’s trading, and even possible that it will emerge from the longer-term schneid in which it currently seems imprisoned. The stock’s volatility has made GameStop look like a sober, stable financial asset.
That said, however, the headwinds are building — not that they were ever any secret.
The principal headwind, of course, is the one telegraphed in that annual report: Trump himself. Since Biden’s withdrawal upended the presidential race and brought Kamala Harris to the fore, Trump’s prospects for victory in the November election have distinctly faded.
In parallel, Trump’s rhetoric and behavior on the stump have become more unhinged and febrile. His standing among the MAGA faithful may have remained solid, but his appeal to independent voters appears to have shrunk — it certainly hasn’t been enhanced. Since DJT is seen as a proxy for his electoral campaign, its slide in value is unsurprising.
But other counterweights have become more significant. One is the question of what Trump intends to do with his own shares in the company, which came to 59.9% of the total shares as of mid-July, according to its financial disclosures. Trump will be entitled to sell any or all of those shares starting in mid-September, when a six-month lockup period expires.
Any indication that Trump is moving to liquidate his exposure to DJT would almost certainly crater the shares’ price; anticipation that he is plotting to leave his outside investors in the lurch, as he has done to investors, partners and customers in other ventures, may account for some of the shares’ weakness.
Trump owns so much of the company that he might be able to realize $1 billion or more via stock sales before other shareholders have a chance to get out the door without taking a loss.
Trump already has shown that he doesn’t take his responsibility to support Truth Social very seriously. He established the platform as a branded alternative to Twitter (now X) after he was thrown off Twitter following the Jan. 6 insurrection. But there is no contractual requirement binding Trump to use Truth Social as his exclusive social media outlet.
One provision of his licensing agreement with DJT requires that he post his personal social media communications on Truth Social six hours before posting them on other platforms.
But his deal with the company allows him to post “politically-related” messages on any platform he chooses — and he has the sole right to determine which posts fall into that category. The company says it “lacks any meaningful remedy” if it disagrees with his designation of posts as “politically-related.”
Elon Musk restored Trump’s account on X in November; he posted there rarely until recently, when his activity picked up. And Trump has posted some tweets on that platform. More notably, on Aug. 12, he Joined Musk for a two-hour rambling, glitch-marred “interview” on X, not Truth Social.
Then there’s the stature of the company as a going concern. It issues all the disclosures required of a public company in the U.S., but anyone reading them would be well advised to open a window first.
Financially speaking, although it still has a market value of $4 billion, the company doesn’t resemble any enterprise that could have been imagined by the value-investing pioneers Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. In its most recent quarterly disclosure, issued Aug. 12, it reported a loss of $344 million on revenue of $1.4 million for the first six months of this year.
No one who has followed Trump’s career with any modicum of attention could be shocked by those figures — or indeed by the fact that the stock has done as well as it has despite them.
Truth Social has been a joke from the inception — a joke on many of the same people still flying “Trump Won” flags from their front yards or wearing red MAGA hats in mixed company. As I wrote prior to the IPO, it was taken public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, a process that was often employed to circumvent government rules for disclosures to investors. SPACs have fallen out of favor because so many of those deals went bust; Truth Social boasted the highest profile of any of them, but its fate may not be any different.
In that first annual report issued on April Fools Day, the company revealed that it scarcely considered itself a real social media business at all. It said it had no plans to “collect, monitor or report” the traditional metrics used by other social media platforms, such as “average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, … monthly and daily active users” — in other words, all the statistics that tell a social media company who is using it, if anyone, and what their participation is worth in dollars and cents.
Having that information would only “divert” the company’s management, the report said, though it wasn’t clear about how management would fashion a strategy for the future if it doesn’t know where it is at present, including just how many users it has.
I wrote in 2021, when the SPAC deal to take Truth Social public was first announced, that it was poised to set a high-water mark for investment schemes. In April, a month after the IPO, I wrote that that Trump might end up laughing all the way to the bank, but his investors would be left with nothing but tears.
We’re well on the way to that glorious moment when I can say, “I told you so.” Or maybe we’re there already.
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