We’ve all done it. Every time you create an internet account, download an app on your phone or even update software that you’ve used for years, you’re asked to click a box agreeing to the “terms and conditions” We never read them. No one does. I’m a lawyer, and I don’t even take the time to look through them. The reason is that it’s mostly a waste of time. If I want to use the service, then I’ll agree to whatever inane restrictions their corporate lawyers put in the terms and conditions. Mostly they always say the same thing anyway. Generally, it says that we agree not to sue the company if the service messes up. Sometimes it goes further than that.

Companies know that no one reads this stuff too. Sometimes they have fun with that. A few years ago the company Purple, a wifi distributor based in Manchester, England, put a clause in their terms and conditions that required people who used their internet service to complete 1,000 hours of community service. They never intended to enforce that part of the contract. They just used it to get publicity after no one read the terms and conditions.

A Georgia High School teacher once won $10,000 for being the first to email her travel insurance company after reading the terms and conditions that had a hidden contest in their fine print. The contest had been there for three years before she sent her email and won.

Mostly though, the terms and conditions aren’t funny or fun. They are boring liability waivers that are basically incomprehensible to ordinary folks. The company knows you want to use their website or service, so they give you a contract that says you promise not to sue them if anything goes wrong. Recently, the Walt Disney Corporation took this a step further than most people expected, and it made the news.

In October of last year, doctor Kanokporn Tangsuan went out to dinner with her husband and mother at a restaurant, the Raglan Road Irish Pub, at Walt Disney World. Dr. Tangsuan was allergic to nuts and dairy, and the restaurant advertised as being friendly to those with allergies. The family informed the staff at the restaurant of the allergies, and they double-checked when the food came out that it was allergen-free. Unfortunately, some of the food served to Dr. Tangsuan contained both nuts and dairy, and after eating her meal, she went into anaphylaxis and died.

Dr. Tansuan’s family has sued the restaurant and Disney following her death. Disney has defended against the lawsuit and in a surprising motion, it claimed that because Dr. Tansuan signed up for a Disney+ subscription in 2019 and bought a ticket to go to Walt Disney World in 2023, she agreed to never sue Disney and arbitrate any disputes with the company privately instead of having a public lawsuit. She allegedly consented to this by checking the box agreeing to the terms and conditions for Disney+ and the terms and conditions when she bought her theme park ticket.

This is, of course, an absurd argument. This is the kind of argument made by huge corporations all the time with the kind of unlimited money to pay lawyers to make losing arguments. The company knows that the little guy suing them does not have unlimited money and time to fight over and over again. Even when the judge rules against the corporation, there is another motion behind that, and one after that one too that the little guy has to fight. The case drags on, and eventually, some folks just give up and settle their case for less than it is worth just to be done.

It is hard to imagine that anyone at Disney actually believes that someone clicking a box on the internet to watch cartoons in 2019 means they can’t sue when they are killed eating at a restaurant in 2023. A judge in Florida will decide this one way or another in October.

In the meantime, think carefully when you click that box.

John Judkins is a Greenfield attorney.