$65 million panrs

WaPo reported Before trial began yesterday in the case of the D.C. judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaners after they lost his pants, the most extraordinary fact was Roy Pearson's demand for $65 million in damages.

Why has this stupid case made it to trial?

That was before Pearson, an administrative law judge, broke down while testifying about the emotional pain of having the cleaners give him the wrong pants.

He should be put in jail next to Paris Hilton; then he would have something to cry about.

... The "willful and malicious conduct" Pearson described consisted of this: In 2005, Pearson was starting his new job as a judge and therefore needed to start wearing suits again after a couple of years of unemployment. He brought five suits in for alterations because he'd put on 20 pounds and needed to have the pants let out. Four suits came back fine. One came back without the pants.

And it must have been his favorite pair.

Pearson says the Chung family -- Korean immigrants who came here from the charcoal factories of Seoul in 1992 and now own three cleaners, including the one a short walk from Pearson's place in the Fort Lincoln section of Northeast -- had no intention of living up to the sign in their shop that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

They should have said Satisfaction Guraranteed to reasonable people. Stupid judges excepted.

Therefore, Pearson said, he had no choice but to take on "the awesome responsibility" of suing the Chungs on behalf of every resident of the District of Columbia.

I wonder if they appreciate his "awesome effort."

Judge Judith Bartnoff went to remarkable lengths to try to keep Pearson moving along while disabusing him of the notion that he represented either the tens of thousands of people who have used Custom Cleaners or the half million people in Washington who might theoretically be at risk of being dissatisfied with the shop's service.