Read Carl Hiaasen for Free Online Page B

against Disney and Arvida, and prosecutors opened a criminal investigation. Although Disney asserted it had done nothing wrong, it eventually settled a class-action lawsuit out of court. Since most of the homes had been fully insured against storm damage, the owners agreed to accept $7,500 each from Arvida and Disney—pocket change for the mammoth entertainment conglomerate, and a smart way to put an end to the nasty headlines.
    But not everyone in Country Walk went along with the deal. Alex and Helen Major, whose four-bedroom home was ripped apart by the hurricane, wanted a jury to hear their case. They withdrew from the class-action suit and pressed ahead on their own.
    In the fall of 1996, with the trial dateapproaching, something strange happened. Disney’s attorneys succeeded in convincing Dade County Circuit Judge Celeste Muir to leave the company’s name out of the case—not the company, just the name. Jurors would never hear the word
Disney
mentioned in open court.
    Alex Major was miffed. Before he’d decided to purchase his house, Country Walk salesmen had juiced up their pitch by invoking the magical Disney reputation. “They told me Disney was the owner of Arvida,” Major recalled to the
Miami Herald
. “You trust people when they tell you how good they are. I’ve been going to Disney since I was a little kid.”
    When Major’s attorney stood before the jury, he must have been tempted to wisecrack about the Mickey Mouse construction at Country Walk. He didn’t. Instead he presented aerial photos documenting how Arvida had hurried the project to meet heavy sales demand. The Majors’ house, for example, had been completed three months
before
the required building permits were issued.
    One of the strongest witnesses was Bob Sheets, a respected meteorologist and former chief of the National Hurricane Center. He testified that Country Walk suffered significantly more damagethan nearby subdivisions, under identical storm conditions. There could be only one explanation: Lousy workmanship.
    Disney and Arvida insisted its houses were built to code and properly inspected. Company lawyers said the Majors should have been aware of the hurricane risk in south Florida and should have done a better job boarding up in advance of the high winds.
    Jurors didn’t agree. They ordered Arvida and two subcontractors to pay $106,675 to the Majors. Would the sum have been higher if the jury had been allowed to hear of Disney’s involvement? Obviously that’s what Team Rodent feared; the same famous name that helped sell all those Country Walk houses could, conversely, amplify a jury’s sentiment that the buyers had been tricked or betrayed.
    Solution: Completely erase the word
Disney
from the debate. After all, hadn’t it been nearly ten years since the company had sold Arvida? It was an audacious argument, but the judge bought it. As for the criminal inquiry, Arvida/Disney was never charged. In fact, few builders were busted in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, despite ample evidence of reckless and incompetent construction. The state attorney’s office said the statute oflimitations ran out before its investigations were complete.
    The folks in Celebration, Florida, don’t have as much to fret about, storm-wise, as those who bought houses in Country Walk. Orlando sits many miles inland from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, and it is unlikely to receive the brunt of a major summer hurricane.
    But if Disney’s subdivision-of-the-future was to be ravaged by some other natural disaster—say, tornadoes of the fierce kind that ripped through nearby Kissimmee in February 1998—rescue duties would not fall to the Reedy Creek Improvement District. That’s because Disney has deannexed Celebration from its main property, a legal maneuver ensuring that sovereign Reedy Creek will remain largely unpopulated, and therefore safe from the uncertainties of democracy.

Whistle While We Work

    T EAM RODENT COULDN’T have