No Mickey Mousing Around

In a small courtroom in Orange County, Calif., last week, Attorney Allen Millstone pointed sadly to his wheelchair-bound client. In 1983 James Higgins had been a vigorous young man of 18 when he went to Disneyland and took a ride on Space Mountain. As the roller coaster rounded a bend, the youth was suddenly thrown from the rocket car. Through Disney's negligence, argued Millstone, Higgins is a paraplegic. Twenty-four hundred miles away in Florida, in another Orange County courtroom, an equally sad story was unfolding. While Marietta and Harry Goode listened closely, Lawyer Philip Freidin recounted a tragic 1977 family outing to Disney World during which the couple's four-year-old son slipped away and drowned in the moat in front of Cinderella Castle. The amusement park, charged Freidin, had failed to guard the waterway properly.

Normally, sympathy-evoking cases like these are prized by personal-injury lawyers, who usually win a healthy majority of their suits--and collect a third of any winnings. But even the most combative attorneys are inclined to shake their heads when the defendant is Walt Disney Productions. Against the huge entertainment complex, personal-injury specialists are hardly ever victorious. The company's astonishing success is the result of a combination of safety-minded care and case-hardened lawyering.

Disney refuses to disclose the annual number of injuries at the California and Florida parks, which draw more than 30 million visitors a year, but there is little doubt that thousands occur. The majority never result in suits at all, thanks to quick soothing from Disney. Says Mike McCray, Disneyland's lawyer since 1955: "If people get wet, we've got clothes dryers, and we dry them off. Before they know it, they're back out there having fun."

Once a suit is filed, however, Disney takes a tough stance, rarely settling out of court for large sums. There are exceptions: the family of a 57-year-old man who drowned after skimming down a River Country slide at Disney World, although a lifeguard was on duty, got $250,000. But generally, says McCray, "if they come in and want a lot of money, they're gonna have to fight for it. If we didn't take that attitude, we'd maybe have as many as 100 times the lawsuits."

Today, Disney says, fewer than 100 lawsuits are filed each year, and plaintiffs' attorneys concede that all are uphill battles. In the Higgins case, Disney contends the youth had been drinking and caused the roller-coaster accident himself. In Orlando, the company argues that the moat in which the boy drowned was safeguarded by at least two fences.

The advantage, lawyers maintain, is Disney's right from the time of the accident. Employees quickly summon supervisors and "security hosts" to round up witnesses and interview the injured, who are often their own worst enemies. Says Orlando Attorney John Overchuck: "It's your dignity that really is on the line, and God knows what you'll say at the time: 'I should have been looking where I was going. How stupid of me.' " Alert Disney staffers write it all down.