Politics
Disney wants to keep food testing results confidential in wrongful death lawsuit
Disney is hoping to keep what could be the smoking-gun evidence hidden from the public in a wrongful death lawsuit that’s captured national attention.
The matter in question: The food testing results from the frozen leftovers eaten by a woman who died from severe food allergies after going to a Disney Springs restaurant in October 2023.
Court records indicate Disney wants to keep the new food testing results confidential in the court case after an independent lab analyzed the remnants of Kanokporn “Amy” Tangsuan’s final meal at Raglan Road.
“It is unclear what good faith basis Disney has to designate the results of the food testing as confidential, which would keep the results shrouded in secrecy,” Brian Denney, the lawyer representing Tangsuan’s widower Jeffrey Piccolo, wrote in a court filing this week.
Denney’s court filing also revealed that five other people were improperly served their meals at the independently owned Irish restaurant on Disney World property in the three years before Tangsuan’s death. One of the incidents where somebody else with food allergies received a meal contaminated with allergens despite warning the restaurant happened only one month before Tangsuan died, the filing said.
Piccolo, who split with his wife after dinner, went back to the hotel and then stuck her doggy bag in the freezer, unaware it was going to be evidence in a future civil lawsuit, according to court records.
“Unbeknownst to him, his beloved wife and partner would be dead within the hour,” Denney said in the court filing. “Amy’s autopsy revealed that she suffered an anaphylactic reaction to dairy despite having repeatedly notified the Raglan Road staff at Disney Springs that she was deathly allergic to dairy.”
InBio Lab released the results of the food testing last week after the parties of the lawsuit agreed on testing protocols to see if there was any dairy found in the meal, which Tangsuan had ordered: broccoli, corn fritters, scallops, vegan Shepherd’s pie and onion rings.
“When a case involves the safety of food served to the public, transparency should be the rule, not the exception,” Denney said in a statement when reached for comment.
The new court records make it clear that the food test results would play a prominent role in the case against Disney and Raglan Road. The food test results would be Exhibit 1 at trial and also attached in “forthcoming motions as needed,” Denney wrote.
Disney World public relations and Raglan Road attorneys did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday on Denney’s court filings.
Denney accused Disney and Raglan Road of being heavy-handed in trying to keep records confidential in the ongoing 2024 lawsuit, as he argued most of the records in the case are not trade secrets and shouldn’t be shielded from public disclosure in court records.
“It should be noted that the Defendants have not been making designations in good faith and have been designating almost every document produced as ‘confidential,’” Denney wrote in another recent filing. “Another example involves the designation of Raglan Road’s menu as ‘confidential,’ despite the fact that it is publicly available to anyone who chooses to dine at Raglan Road.”
Florida Politics broke the story of the wrongful death lawsuit and Disney’s controversial legal strategy to fight it, which generated a flood of bad publicity for Disney.
Disney tried to force the lawsuit into arbitration, citing a little-known provision in the fine print of the terms and conditions for the Disney+ streaming service and theme park ticket purchases.
Under public pressure, Disney later backtracked and agreed the lawsuit could proceed in court.
Tangsuan, 42, a beloved doctor from New York, is remembered for her kindness and gentle nature.
The policy expansion is retroactive through November 2024.
The House is expanding its paid parental leave policy when employees have a baby or adopt a child, House Speaker Daniel Perez announced.
The policy takes effect immediately and applies retroactively for parents who took leave from Nov. 19, 2024, onward.
Going forward, full-time salaried employees will get up to seven consecutive weeks of paid parental leave for maternity leave after childbirth.
The House will also offer mothers and fathers paid care and bonding leave for up to two weeks within one year after a child’s birth or adoption. The care and bonding leave “may be granted on an intermittent basis” and can’t be taken during the 60-day Legislative Session. It requires supervisor approval as well, Perez’s memo said.
It’s an expansion from the current policy, which Perez explained in the memo.
“As has been the policy of the House, an employee who is the father or mother of a natural born or adopted child will continue to be granted parental leave for a period not to exceed three months total,” Perez’s memo said.
“The employee may include in the request for parental leave one or all of the following types of leave: (new) paid parental leave when allowable; up to 240 hours of accrued sick leave; annual leave; compensatory leave; personal holiday; and leave without pay.”
To help retroactively, the House Office of Administration and Professional Development will be contacting employees to talk about their situations.
The majority of Americans don’t get paid time off for childbirth, according to a 2019 Kaiser Foundation study.
A few major employers in Florida are offering the benefit to new parents.
Publix, for instance, began offering full- and part-time employees paid parental leave in 2022.
“We frequently review our benefits to continually offer a comprehensive package to our associates,” Publix spokesperson Maria Brous told Florida Politics at the time the policy was unveiled.
Politics
Ben Albritton on the future of property tax proposals in the Senate: ‘We’re still measuring’
With eight proposals on eliminating or cutting property taxes moving through the House and Gov. Ron DeSantis maintaining that none go far enough, many are looking more and more to the Senate for signs of what, if any, change could be coming.
As he’s done in months past, Senate President Ben Albritton is advocating for a cautious, unhurried approach.
“Honest to goodness, we’re still measuring,” Albritton told reporters Monday. “We’ve looked at the House proposals, and every one of those has a certain amount of cost to it and a certain amount of impact to Floridians.”
Albritton said that while the Senate is committed to delivering financial relief to Floridians in the form of property tax cuts or rollbacks, he and others in the chamber are cognizant that many core services at the local level stand to be adversely affected if it’s done carelessly.
“Every Floridian … depends on the fact that if they call 911, somebody comes to their place, somebody comes to help them,” he said. “We’ve got to be thoughtful about that.”
Asked whether the Governor has unilateral authority to redistribute funds derived from well-to-do counties like Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Orange to 29 fiscally constrained, mostly rural counties — as DeSantis has proposed doing — Albritton’s answer was more definitive: “No.”
“The Florida Legislature (is) given the power to appropriate. The Governor is certainly the chief executive. He has the ability to veto or be supportive. He has, I would say, the ability and the opportunity to be able to share perspective in his budget request and when he lays out the budget,” he said.
“The opportunity to backfill lies in the Legislature.”
On the idea of cash-strapped counties asking the state for funding annually that they’d otherwise generate locally, Albritton said it’s “certainly a concern.”
“Do I love the idea? Of course not,” he said. “But I (believe) affordability is a challenge, and providing some relief in the property tax space is a great way to do that, and especially for (homesteaded) Floridians … that’s great.”
Albritton pushed back on the idea that eliminating property taxes would lead to a “gold rush” of wealthy transplants to the Sunshine State, stressing that he is “optimistic” about the prospect despite its potentially negative effects.
“But it’s not that simple,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that I’m finding in that here again: Don’t take down a fence until you know why it was put up.”
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