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.

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.

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.”