Judge Fancy Pants

While reading up on some legal precedents in defamation suits, I came across a story that’s in equal parts both hilarious and also just plain bizarre.

A family of South-Korean immigrants, the Chungs, were running a Pop-Mom laundry shop ‘Custom Cleaners’ in Washington DC in 2005. From all counts, they were an honest, low-key establishment well-regarded by their group of customers who frequented their services. Like many other service-centric operations there and also around the world, their shop carried advertisements claiming “Same Day Service” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed”.

In May 2005 though, they were served notice for a suit by an administrative law judge in the district – a Roy Pearson. The judge had sent in his pants for cleaning, but the apparel was mistakenly directed to another dry cleaners. The mistake was rectified with the return of the pants delayed by a couple of days. When Pearson got the pants back, he insisted it wasn’t his – despite corroboration of the pants with Custom Cleaners’ records, tags, and Pearson’s own receipt.

The two parties couldn’t come to agreement, so Pearson filed suit. And here’s the wickedest part of it – he wanted $67,000,000 in damages. And that’s in USD. In Singapore dollars, that’d be one hundred million moola… for a pair of pants. His case? He said that the Chungs had not delivered their promises of “Same Day Service”, and “Satisfaction Guaranteed” to him.

Maybe the pair of pants he lost was diamond-studded with 24 carats, or the pants was sent to laundry with two million cans of premium Abalone stuffed somewhere inside it. But the suit was no joke to the Chungs, who were completely bewildered by the awesomeness and audacity of the claim. The public came to their rescue though with donations for them to seek legal aid and for lost business. The Chungs had already offered settlement offers of $3,000, $4,600, and $12,000… all of which were rejected by Pearson. I’m not sure what the good judge was smoking, but $12,000 for a pair of pants sounds like a very good deal to me.

In any case, the suit reached trial and after a bit of ding-doinging was concluded in 2007 – with the D.C. judge ruling in favor of the Chungs, awarding legal costs to them and sanctioning Pearson $12,000 for “creating unnecessary litigation”.

The story doesn’t end there: for the next two years, Pearson filed motions of appeal and reconsideration but was overturned and rejected each time. Along the process, he lost his job as judge on the basis that Pearson lacked the necessary “judicial temperament” for that position.

The case became fodder for bloggers, news commentaries and even international attention, with most persons – not surprisingly – unsympathetic to Pearson. Even Fortune magazine listed this incident as #37 of that year’s dumbest moments in business. Pearson himself ended up being referred to by bloggers as “Judge Fancy Pants”.

[Sources: here, here and here]