At Least One Disney Lawyer Needs to Be Launched Into the Sun

Opening Arguments

OA1060

This week Matt breaks down four very different legal actions:

1. Donald Trump is suing the United States--yes, the same United States that he is running to be the President of--for $100 million based on the FBI’s alleged violation of the Florida common law tort of “intrusion upon seclusion” in executing a valid search warrant on Mar-A-Lago two years ago. Is Trump just spiking the legal football after his big win in front of federal judge Aileen Cannon in Jack Smith’s documents case, or is there actually something worth talking about here?

2. Is the Walt Disney Corporation actually arguing that signing up for a 30-day trial of its Disney+ streaming service protects them from the tragically fatal consequences of negligence at a restaurant in its Disney Springs shopping center? Could that really be a thing that licensed attorneys wrote down, printed, reviewed, signed, and filed with a court? We consider what might be one of the most bizarrely evil defenses ever raised in a wrongful death suit.

3. Soul singer Isaac Hayes’s family has joined the dozens of artists who have spoken out against their music being used at Trump rallies, issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the campaign alleging that it has used Hayes’s song “Hold On! I’m Coming” at least 134 times even after being asked to stop. To what extent do artists have “moral rights” under US intellectual property law, and what alternatives are available to them when they don’t? We riffing on a particularly interesting failure to harmonize copyright and antitrust law.

4. French authorities have announced that they will investigate claims of cyberbullying against Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif, a ciswoman from Algeria who was harassed online by J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and many more of the world’s finest people with completely baseless claims that she was not a biological woman. We debate the merits of this uniquely European approach to criminalizing speech and marvel at the unmatched powers of TERF ideology to rot the human brain (and soul).

• Hayes Enterprises cease and desist letter (8/11/2024)

• BMI’s “Political Entity Licensing Terms”

• “License to Rock,” Leah Scholnick, Cardozo Law Review (4/7/2022)

• Doctor dies after eating dinner at Raglan Road Irish Pub and Restaurant at Disney Springs, lawsuit alleges | FOX 10 Phoenix (2/26/24)(includes full text of plaintiff’s complaint)