Law Students

His Pants Are On Fire: How Judge Roy Pearson Sued Cleaners

By C. C.

We learned about the lawsuit by a Washington D.C. administrative law judge named Roy Pearson against his diabolical neighborhood dry cleaners (Custom Cleaners), who allegedly lost or stole or set fire to or irradiated or otherwise acted tortiously towards a pair of pants that he dropped off for cleaning four years ago.

The bulk of the damages were calculated in a very straightforward manner under the D.C. consumer-protection statute. Applying the simple equation:

X=1500D*V*W

(where X=1500 x [number of Days violation persisted] x [number of Violations] x [(number of Wrongdoers])

yields a total of $64,800,000. It is not clear yet how the judge derived 12 violations from one pair of pants, so assuming he is just a bit optimistic there, a more reasonable lost-pants valuation would seem to be $5.4 million.

A new detail is that an additional $15,000 was claimed in order to compensate the plaintiff, who obviously can no longer use this neighborhood cleaners, for the cost of having to rent a car each weekend for a ten-year period in order to go to another one. Based on rough calculations, that comes out to just $15.64 per day, which again is a very reasonable value for car rental.

The remaining $647,500 claimed by the judge appears to be a combination of litigation expenses and time, and his “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort.” At least some of the “discomfort,” however, may be due to the alternative cause of the judge’s pants having become “uncomfortably tight” in the first place, damages that he could have mitigated.

Roy Pearson Divorce Details

Finally, the publicity over the lawsuit has led some of these unscrupulous Internet people to dig up the opinion from Judge Pearson’s divorce proceedings a few years ago, in which he was demanding support from his wife. Consistent with his current tactics, he sought sanctions at least twice, demanded the judge recuse himself, filed multiple motions to compel his wife to respond to his 248 requests for admission, and, according to the trial judge, “in good part [was] responsible for driving up” everyone’s legal costs, “including threatening both the wife and her lawyer with disbarment” which created “unnecessary litigation.”

No news yet on whether Judge Pearson, who is up this week for another ten-year term as an administrative law judge, will be reappointed.

Judge Drops Pants From Suit

As an update to this, in a pre-trial brief, Pearson lowered his demand to a mere $54 million, and apparently focuses now on the allegedly misleading signs used by Custom Cleaners, as opposed to the allegations of damages stemming from the loss of Pearson’s pants.

I am by no means the first to use something like “Judge Drops Pants From Suit” as a headline, and I struggled with that for a while, but sometimes a headline joke is just inevitable. A variation on the theme was the best I could do.

Since I haven’t seen the brief yet, it’s not entirely clear whether the pants were dropped entirely, or the focus merely changed. If they were dropped entirely and the demand reduced to $54 million, then that seems to indicate that Judge Pearson valued the pants and associated damages at $13 million. (I apologize for earlier statements about “$65-million-dollar pants,” which it seems were wildly exaggerated.)

But the suit itself is still going forward, apparently, since the report states that trial is set for June 11. The defendants’ attorney said he was “still baffled” as to why Pearson was continuing, “unless it’s simply to harass and annoy my clients.” Pearson refused to comment “in light of pending litigation,” which is an awfully popular no-comment excuse these days.

Pant Facts From Manning and Sossamon

The suit is costing the defendants an awful lot of money, of course. (Pearson is representing himself, and seems to be getting what he’s paying for.) There’s also a link to a page on this case at the site of the defense firm, Manning and Sossamon, which includes some additional details such as these:

• Mr. Pearson alleges that on May 3, 2005 he left a pair of pants with the Chungs to be altered by May 5, 2005. The pants he submitted were grey in color and were unique in that they had a succession of three belt loops very close together on each side of the front waistband of the pants.
• The Chungs offered the altered grey pants to Mr. Pearson a few days after the May 5, 2007 deadline.
• Mr. Pearson refused to accept the pants the Chungs offered even though (1) the pants had the same unique belt loop configuration as the pants he originally submitted; (2) the pants’ measurements were identical to measurements he requested for the alteration; and, (3) the tag number on the pants matched his receipt.

This is the first I’ve heard of the unique belt-loop configuration issue, which may make it extremely difficult for Pearson to show the pants were not his, if the pants are still an issue in the case, as I expect they will be. Stay tuned for more dramatic developments in this titanic legal battle.

[thanks to cat segovia and kevin underhill via cc]

Related Posts:

• Cablevision Gets Sued By Movie Studios For Copyright Infringement
• Nebraska Court Throws Out Claim For T-shirt That Caught Fire
• Adult Age Verification Gets Struck Down By a Federal Judge
• Microsoft Getting Sued Over Scratching Xbox 360 Games
• How Libraries and Museums Get Sued for Public Domain Scans

Full post as published by Law Vibe on February 03, 2010 (boomark / email).