The Brother Should Have Settled This Case A Looong Time Ago!
A D.C. judge ruled in favor this morning in the $54 million lawsuit over a dry-cleaning dispute involving a single pair of pants, which garnered international media attention when it was tried earlier this month.
Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff issued a written opinion in the case of Roy L. Pearson Jr. vs. Soo Chung et al., in which Pearson argued that the dry cleaners owned by Chung and her husband did not make good on its promise of "Satisfaction Guaranteed."
Pearson, an African-American administrative law judge in D.C., has represented himself in the lawsuit.
He had shed big crocodile tears in the courtroom while outlining his years-long battle with Custom Cleaners over a pair of suit pants, which he argued were lost after he brought them in to have the waist let out. Man-up your honor!
Pearson was seeking $500,000 in attorney's fees, $2 million for his "discomfort, inconvenience and mental distress" and $51.5 million that he said he would use to help other D.C. residents sue businesses for similar claims.
Originally, Pearson had sought $65 million.
As a result of his loss, Pearson could be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees incurred by the owners of Customer Cleaners. Professionally, he could find himself out of his $96,000-a-year job with the District government.
The case has been widely covered by the U.S. media and Korean news organizations, whose interest was piqued because the Chungs are Korean immigrants.
In researching his case exhaustively -- many would say obsessively -- over the years, Pearson became an expert on D.C. consumer law, an expertise that Bartnoff acknowledged during the trial.
But she also warned Pearson after closing arguments that she would take care to ensure that the city's laws are not applied inappropriately.
"This is a very important statute to protect consumers," the judge said June 13. "It's also very important that statutes like this are not misused."