Workers Allege Fraudulent Inducement After Disney Asked Them to Move to Florida

According to Mike Schneider writing for the Associated Press, The Disney Company asked 2000 of its employees to relocate from Southern California to Florida, as Disney was planning to build a new company campus near its theme park in Orlando.  The employees allege that Disney encouraged them to move through incentives and with the threat that their employment would be terminated if they did not move.

Even though some employees resisted the move, sometime between late 2021 and June 2022, when Disney announced that the move was delayed, plaintiffs sold their California homes and relocated to Florida.  They allege that, even after Disney announced that its new campus would not open until 2026, it encouraged workers to move by 2024.  

Enter a certain Florida governor (right), who started a culture war against Disney.  In 2023, Disney announced that it had scrapped plans for a relocation.  According to Mike Schneider's reporting, it instructed workers who had already moved to Florida that they could head back to California.  

But with Disney's decision to cancel its planned construction in Florida, the housing market there declined, while housing prices in California continued to climb.  Although employees worried about losing their jobs if they stayed in Florida, they also did not think they could afford to return to California.  They are suing Disney, alleging fraudulent inducement.

Seems like a tough claim to win on, especially against a very well-resourced company.  But all may still work out for the best in the Happiest Place on Earth.  Mike Schneider also reports for The Associated Press that The Disney Company and the Governor entered into a fifteen-year development agreement in May in which Disney committed to pump $17 billion into the local economy over the next two decades.  It is not clear what concessions Disney got in exchange for continuing its investment in the state.  It seems like the Governor  caused, or at least exacerbated, a lot of disruption in peoples' lives.  Suing him is not an option, and of course, he too can argue that much of his conduct was fraudulently induced.  He thought he was going to be President.

Recent scholarship by Jonathan Harris (left) suggests that there might also be an economic duress angle in cases like this.  Such cases are hard to win.  However, like a promissory estoppel claim, such a claim might improve the settlement value of the claim.  If the employment at issue is at will, damages might be limited to expenses incurred, which might not even cover the attorneys' fees involved in suing a company like Disney.  Hence, the need for a lawsuit that will be expensive enough for Disney to defend that it will be brought to the bargaining table.  Other recent work by Rachel Arnow-Richman (above right) and J.H. Verkerke (right) on Deconstructing Employment Law is also of note here on the problems with conceptualizing at-will employment as a form of contract under current doctrine.

As is so often the case, there was a flurry of media interest in this case back in June and now . . . crickets.  I was hoping to be able to provide an update, but I guess the reporters have all moved on to the next story.