Posted in: Disney+, Opinion, streaming, TV, TV | Tagged: disney, florida, lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, opinion, ron desantis

Disney: The Mouse Calls Out Ron DeSantis' Truthiness, Defends Judge

Disney filed a response to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' attempts to have the judge presiding over Disney's lawsuit removed from the case.

Published Mon, 29 May 2023 18:07:13 -0500

by Ray Flook

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Kick off your 2024 U.S. Presidential Campaign with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces to wonderfully hysterical results that left Twitter folks debating who it made look worse? Check! Have to deal with the reportedly unexpected resignation of GOP cheerleader/Disney lawsuit co-defendant Michael Sasso from your Central Florida Tourism Oversight District's Board of Supervisors? Check! Have 72-96 hours that were so embarrassingly bad that you even gave Donald Trump the space to make fun of you (Donald Trump!)? Check! Even for Florida Governor & Future 2024 Trump Supporter Ron DeSantis, that is a righteously unimpressive embarrassment of riches. But the hits just keep on rolling! Because we learned earlier today that "The Mouse" has responded to DeSantis' Attorney General's efforts to have Chief Judge Mark E. Walker removed from the pending legal case between Disney & DeSantis (more on that here) due to past comments that included referring to the concept of "woke" as the "boogeyman of the day."

In the filed response (which you can check out here), Disney's legal team claim, "Defendants' motion to disqualify is premised on a misapprehension of the law and a misstatement of the facts," putting forth Judge Walker's "lengthy record of consistent fairness and objectivity" and accusing DeSantis' administration of attempting to distort a few of Judge Walker's previous comments in a way that misrepresents the facts. Here's a look at what Disney's legal team had to say:

Defendants …base their motion on two year-old hypothetical questions during prior judicial proceedings where the Court accurately referred to widely-publicized statements from Florida legislators about their intent to change the governing structure of the Reedy Creek Improvement District ("RCID") specifically because Disney expressed a political viewpoint disfavored by the legislators. The Court did not make any findings about those statements, but simply invoked them during oral arguments as examples to test arguments being advanced by counsel addressing different issues under different factual records.

Judges are not prohibited from referring accurately to widely-reported news events during oral arguments, nor must they disqualify themselves if cases related to those events happen to come before them months later. Disqualification is allowed only if the prior comments expose an incapacity on the judge's part to consider the new case on its own merits. The comments here come nowhere close to that standard.

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