Disney’s abandoned Florida relocation plan leads to employee class action lawsuit

Disney’s now abandoned plan to relocate its employees to Florida has resulted in some pretty dire legal consequences.

More than a year after Disney, again led by Bob Iger, abandoned its Bob Chapek-era initiative to consolidate some of its California operations and employees at a new campus in the Lake Nona area of ​​Orlando, a current vice president of product design and a director of product design are suing the company in a potential class action lawsuit.

“Because plaintiffs and all similarly situated employees relied on the Lake Nona Project testimony and Disney failed to disclose the withheld facts, they have suffered various damages, including losses associated with the sale of their homes in California, the purchase of new homes in Florida, and other expenses and damages associated with unnecessary cross-country moves,” said the jury statement in the lawsuit filed last night in Los Angeles Superior Court by Disney employees Maria De La Cruz and George Fong (read it here).

Disney brushed aside its 2021 claims about “Florida’s business-friendly climate,” the state’s generous $500 million tax credit offer, and Chapek’s idea of ​​pooling resources, and pulled the plug on the ambitious $1 billion-plus Lake Nona project in May 2023. The death blow came as a result of the now-ended legal battle with failed presidential candidate Governor Ron DeSantis over his “Don’t Say Gay” law, so-called “woke” corporate policies, and bureaucratic control of the Disney World area.

With the move already postponed once to 2026, the real consequences of the battle between the titans of politics and leadership have shaken the lives of people in the middle.

“Plaintiffs and similarly situated employees would not have suffered these damages had Disney not made false statements,” the complaint, which alleges four counts of misrepresentation, continues. “Plaintiffs’ and similarly situated employees’ reliance on Disney’s statements was therefore a material factor in causing these damages.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a class action lawsuit that could ultimately include more than 250 Disney employees. Fong and De La Cruz are also seeking a range of unspecified damages.

No doubt in part because of the Juneteenth holiday, Disney representatives did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on the proposed class action lawsuit.

What the lawsuit filed by San Francisco attorneys Jason S. Lohr and Roberto G. Ripamonti, however, expresses is a process of “hurrying up and waiting” in which people like Fong sold their parents’ home in the Golden State to move to Florida only because a company promised them a “brand-new, state-of-the-art campus” that was never delivered.

Added to this was the collapse in real estate prices in Lake Nona after Disney decided not to relocate thousands of employees there, as well as the increase in “mortgage rates,” California real estate prices, and other living costs between summer 2022 and summer 2023. This resulted in many Disney employees like De La Cruz and Fong owning homes in Florida that they were having difficulty selling and looking at homes in California that they could now no longer afford.

“The unfortunate irony is that the employees who were most harmed were Disney’s most loyal employees,” Lohr told Deadline today. “Disney needs to make this right for its best and most loyal employees.”

And as with the announcement of the move to Florida in 2021, there was again concern that people could lose their jobs if they did not return to the West Coast in time.

“On or about May 18, 2023, Disney notified plaintiffs and other similarly situated individuals that they had until the end of 2023 to decide whether or not to remain in Florida,” the potential class action lawsuit states. “Those who choose not to remain in Florida would have until the end of 2024 to physically relocate to California to work in Disney’s California offices.”

It should be noted that Tami Garcia of Disney Human Resources emailed those affected in late May 2023 that “we deeply regret the disruption you have all experienced as a result of this initiative,” but that the payout offered by the company “did not constitute … adequate compensation,” the new lawsuit states.

Hence the class action lawsuit on Tuesday.