Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Young FRANKenstein]

WE'LL BEAT THE PANTS OFF YOU
by Jeffrey Anbinder

Imagine that someone has LOST YOUR PANTS.

That's the horrific, unending nightmare that Roy L. Pearson Jr., 57,
suffered for two and a half years. When his hard work as a longtime legal
aid lawyer in Washington, DC paid off with a probationary two-year
appointment as an Administrative Law Judge in 2005, he brought all five
of his suits to Custom Dry Cleaners in for alterations. But when he
returned to pick them up, one pair of pants was missing.

MISSING!!

To add insult to injury, when Pearson returned later, the proprietors
-- Jin and Soo Chung -- tried, he claims, to pass off a cheaper pair of
pants as his. He demanded $1,150 for a replacement suit; Pearson wants to
look his best, so he is very particular about his suits despite a limited
budget, and always buys the same style of suit from Hickey Freeman. The
Chungs did not respond.

Luckily, Washington, D.C., has the Consumer Protection Procedures Act
(CPPA), a law designed to protect consumers from being cheated by local
businesses' broken promises. This law goes beyond simply reporting
someone to the Better Business Bureau, and grants a private right of
action to sue for damages to be made whole again. After all, Custom Dry
Cleaners brazenly displays signs claiming "Same Day Service" and
"Satisfaction Guaranteed" in their store, despite Pearson's catastrophic
experience to the contrary. So he decided to avail himself of these
rights. He did what any one of us would do: he sued the Chungs -- for
$65,462,500. That's right, more than $65 million.

OK, now it's not so funny anymore.

Judge Pearson represented himself, casting himself as the victim of an
enormous, malicious fraud, and telling the court with a straight face,
"You will search the D.C. archives in vain for a case of more egregious
or willful conduct." He even began to cry while testifying about the day
he says the Chungs tried to substitute a cheaper pair of pants for his,
then he asked for a break and dabbed away tears as he left the courtroom.

But if it's sympathy he wants, perhaps Pearson should not have
included the cost of renting a car every weekend for ten years in the
amount of damages he's seeking. Why a car? Oh, that's for driving to
another cleaner, since he doesn't have a car of his own. But that
accounts for only $15,000 of the absurd total; the rest is to compensate
him and the rest of the Chungs' customers for $1,500 per "violation" per
day, times twelve violations, times 1,200 days, times three defendants,
plus the over one thousand hours he claims to have devoted to prosecuting
this case. If it makes you feel better, though, Pearson also indicated
that $51 million of these theoretical damages would be used to help
similarly aggrieved consumers sue other business in the District.

By the time the case went to trial, the Chungs had offered to settle
it for $3,000 -- then for $4,000 -- and finally for $12,000? Pearson
could have bought ten new suits for that, but he rejected the offer.
Cloaked in the CPPA, he styled himself a "private attorney general"
fighting for the rights of the over 26,000 customers the Chungs had
bamboozled over the years with their "false promises" of "satisfaction
guaranteed".

"This case shocks me on a daily basis," said the Chungs' attorney,
Chris Manning, before the trial. "Pearson has a lot of time on his hands,
and the Chungs have been abused in a ghastly way. It's going to cost them
tens of thousands to defend this case."

As to trying to bring in all of the Chungs 26,000 customers into the
case, D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz said that "the court has
significant concerns that the plaintiff is acting in bad faith" due to
"the breathtaking magnitude of the expansion he seeks." Among the
questions Pearson demanded the Chungs answer: "Please identify by name,
full address and telephone number, all cleaners known to you on May 1,
2005 in the District of Columbia, the United States and the world that
advertise 'SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.'" Got that? All the dry cleaners in
the world. Since they didn't have personal knowledge of any, the Chungs
were able to answer "None." before they went on to answer the rest of the
interrogatories....

The trial ended as you might expect (or at least hope) it would:
Superior Court Judge Judith Barnoff ruled in favor of the Chungs, even
awarding them court costs on the grounds that Pearson had "engaged in bad
faith and vexatious litigation." But naturally, that wasn't the end of
it: Pearson filed a motion for reconsideration, which claimed that Judge
Barnoff had "committed a fundamental legal error" and failed to address
his claims. He argued that the court had substituted its own
interpretation of "satisfaction guaranteed" rather than accepting his
argument that the signs were unconditional. The court disagreed and
denied the motion.

The Chungs later withdrew their motion for court costs, attorneys'
fees, and sanctions, as supporters -- including the American Tort Reform
Association, the Institute for Legal Reform of the United States Chamber
of Commerce, and Washington Post newspaper readers -- had raised nearly
$100,000 to help cover their defense. They said they also hoped that
withdrawing the motion would persuade Pearson to stop litigating.

But it didn't: a day before the deadline, Pearson filed a notice of
appeal in the pants lawsuit -- so the Chungs are not yet completely off
the hook.

The loss wasn't the only blow to Pearson. In August, the Commission on
Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges was charged with
deciding whether he should receive a full, 10-year term to continue his
work as a judge. Reports from inside indicate that even after Chief
Administrative Law Judge Tyrone Butler had submitted a letter
recommending Pearson's reappointment, Pearson sent a number of e-mails
within the ALJ staff calling Butler "evil" and "mean-spirited." Butler
changed his recommendation. Based on that, and on questions about
Pearson's judicial temperament and ethics arising from the lawsuit, the
commission came back with a unanimous decision not to recommend his
reappointment. After two months of foot dragging (it's unclear whether by
Pearson or by the Commission -- but we can guess), this week the
Commission hand-delivered a letter ordering Pearson to clean out his
office and get out within 90 minutes. He was paid about $100,000 year as
a judge.

The Chungs sold the Custom Dry Cleaners shop in question in September,
citing emotional strain and a loss of revenue. They still own one other
dry cleaning shop, and have said they will be focusing on that one for
the future. The infamous pants, meanwhile, have hung in their attorney's
closet for well over a year -- turned over to him because Pearson
wouldn't accept them. "We believe the pants are his," Manning said. "The
tag matches his receipt."

The True Stella Awards has often said that judges should work harder
to keep frivolous, and especially vexatious, suits out of the courts. How
shocking, then, to find a judge who not only brings such an action to
court himself, but keeps it going even in the face of unanimous
condemnation. The unanimous action by the Commission on Selection and
Tenure of Administrative Law Judges is heartening, but now it's time for
Judge Pearson to lose his license to practice law.


SOURCES:

1) "Lawyer's Price for Missing Pants: $65 Million", Washington Post, 26
April 2007
http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect5.pl?81a

2) "Kick in the Pants", Washington Post, 3 May 2007
http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect5.pl?81b

3) "Judge Tries Suing Pangs Off Dry Cleaners", New York Times, 13 June
2007
http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect5.pl?81c

4) "Judge Who Filed Suit Plans to Appeal Defeat", Washington Post, 15
August 2007
http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect5.pl?81d

5) "Judge Who Lost Pant Suit Loses Job", Washington Post, 31 October 2007
http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect5.pl?81d

and various court filings.