6.18.2007

Legal David and Goliath


The Great American Pants Suit

Excerpts:

When attorney Roy Pearson filed suit demanding $67 million from the Chung family, whose Washington dry cleaners had mishandled his pair of trousers, he must have felt he was sitting pretty. Menacing a merchant who's annoyed you with terrifyingly high legal penalties--that's the way to show who wears the pants, right?

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It all began two years ago when Mr. Pearson walked into Custom Cleaners, a Northeast D.C. establishment owned by Jin Chung, Soo Chung and Ki Chung. He laid down $10.50 to have a pair of pants altered. The results dissatisfied him: The job wasn't finished on time, and he says the pants he was given were someone else's, which the Chungs deny. He demanded $1,150 for a new suit; the Chungs demurred. So it was off to court, with the claimed damages subject to alterations, in an expansive direction.

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The Chungs offered Pearson $12,000, which he turned down. The family says the suit has run through their savings in legal fees and harmed their credit, to say nothing of their peace of mind; they've even considered returning to their native Korea, which they left in 1992.

But what really gave legs to the story was this: while his lawsuit was afoot, attorney Pearson himself was overcoming a two-year spell of unemployment to win appointment as an administrative law judge in D.C. So don't dismiss him as just some random bully with a law license. For those in our nation's capital, he represents the majestic face of the law itself.


The lost trousers that landed dry cleaners with a law suit

Comment: The "everyman's" nightmare: a frivolous lawsuit that sucks one dry financially and emotionally. I pray for justice in DC!

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