The Walt Disney Company has filed a counterclaim against the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, seeking damages and the enforcement of a set of development contracts, according to Deadline.
What’s Happening:
- The counterclaim shows that Disney is seeking unspecified damages and wants a court order that the board comply with the development contracts signed by the prior Reedy Creek board and Walt Disney World
- In February, the Disney-controlled board of the special district approved the development contracts, ensuring that the company’s Florida theme parks and resorts still maintained a degree of autonomy even after state law was changed later in the month.
- That bill allowed DeSantis to appoint his own members to the board of the district, which was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board.
- “As a direct and proximate result of the District’s anticipatory repudiations and, in the alternative, material failure to perform its duties under both contracts, Disney has suffered and will continue to suffer damages, including consequential damages,” Disney attorneys wrote.
- In their own state court lawsuit, the DeSantis-controlled board claimed that the Disney-Reedy Creek contracts were a “backroom deal” intended to “tie the hands of the new, independent board.”
- Disney, however, insisted that the development contracts were approved with proper public notice and other procedures followed, with members of the press present for the special district board meetings.
- Disney also takes interest with the violation of free speech, saying that “the district’s retaliatory interference with the contracts, via the legislative declaration and its predicates, has chilled and continues to chill Disney’s protected speech.”
- “This unconstitutional chilling effect is particularly offensive here due to the express retaliatory and punitive intent that has motivated the District’s and the State Legislature’s actions, at the Governor’s directive,” the company’s legal team added.
- The judge in the case, Margaret H Schreiber, last month declined to toss out the DeSantis-appointed board’s lawsuit against Disney.