Two Disney $DIS employees sued the company for allegedly forcing them to relocate from California to Florida, only to cancel the $1 billion Orlando campus where they were supposed to work.
Disney canceled the proposed Florida campus in 2023 — but the plaintiffs had already sold their homes in California to move
Two Disney $DIS employees sued the company for allegedly forcing them to relocate from California to Florida, only to cancel the $1 billion Orlando campus where they were supposed to work.
Maria De La Cruz and George Fong, who both work in product design, filed a potential class action suit on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Business Insider reports.
The suit accuses Disney of “solicitation of employee by misrepresentation, intentional misrepresentation, concealment, and negligent misrepresentation.”
The aggrieved employees said Disney told them in 2021 that they needed to relocate from the Glendale, California office to the new campus it was building in Lake Nona, Orlando. The company allegedly “made it clear” they would be fired if they didn’t move east.
Both employees agreed and sold their homes in California. For Fong, that meant selling the childhood home he’d been raised in, BI reports.
But in June 2022, Disney delayed the deadline to relocate to 2026. A year later, following Bob Iger’s return, Disney canceled the proposed $1 billion Lake Nona campus project as part of its cost-cutting measures and after its feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
De La Cruz and Fong decided they needed to return to California for the sake of their jobs, BI reports, but the housing market had changed. The workers said they were no longer able to buy homes in the Los Angeles area they once lived in after prices shot up and mortgage rates rose. Fong had to move into a much smaller house, the suit claims.
The two employees are seeking damages for the fiasco.
Disney did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday morning.
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