The Wall Street Journal
COMMENTARY
The Great American Pants Suit
By WALTER OLSON
June 18, 2007; Page A16
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? Mr. Pearson probably had no idea that his Great American Pants Suit -- the trial of which just wound up in a Washington courtroom last week, with a verdict expected this week -- would stir commentary around the world and come to symbolize the extent to which lawsuits in America can serve as a hobby for the spiteful and a weapon for the rapacious.
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.
How billowy did those damages get? Well, it seems Mr. Pearson needed to be paid for 10 years' worth of weekend car rentals so that he could patronize a different dry cleaner. He wanted $500,000 for emotional distress and -- though representing himself -- $542,000 in legal fees. Best of all, he claimed that the signs on display at Custom Cleaners, "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and "Same Day Service," were fraudulent, entitling him to damages of $1,500 each per day under D.C. consumer law. He multiplied 12 violations by three defendants by 1,200 days, and soon was up over $65 million (later cut to a mere $54 million).
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.
(snip)
Mr. Olson is senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and edits Overlawyered.com.
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