Judge Sues Cleaner for $65 Million Over Pants
By LUBNA TAKRURI
AP
WASHINGTON (May 3) — The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation’s capital. For the past two years, however, they’ve been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants.
Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are so disheartened that they’re considering moving back to Seoul, said their attorney, Chris Manning, who spoke on their behalf.
“They’re out a lot of money, but more importantly, incredibly disenchanted with the system,” Manning said. “This has destroyed their lives.”
The lawsuit was filed by a District of Columbia administrative hearings judge, Roy Pearson, who has been representing himself in the case.
Pearson did not return phone calls and e-mails Wednesday from The Associated Press requesting comment.
According to court documents, the problem began in May 2005 when Pearson became a judge and brought several suits for alteration to Custom Cleaners in Northeast Washington, a place he patronized regularly despite previous disagreements with the Chungs. A pair of pants from one suit was not ready when he requested it two days later, and was deemed to be missing.
Pearson asked the cleaners for the full price of the suit: more than $1,000. But a week later, the Chungs said the pants had been found and refused to pay.
That’s when Pearson decided to sue. Manning said the cleaners made three settlement offers to Pearson. First they offered $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000. But Pearson wasn’t satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants.
Here is the full story.
This is precisely the reason why I requested for my name to be removed from the USCF forums after legal threats were issues. Some people just have too much time on their hands and they give the legal system a bad name. What do you think of this story?
UPDATE: After around 15,000 votes, 91% agree with the Cleaners and 2% with the Judge.
This judge should be removed from court permanently. And the nut in the forum should be sentenced to 1 year with sloan.
The judge has shown he should not be a judge. The judge is way off base here. This guy has no ability to dispense justice. He is power playing a poor hard working guy who is just trying his best. I get this feeling the judge may also be showing prejudice.
Absolutely outrageous. I hope he loses his judgeship immediately. But then I guess they are all corrupt.
>>>the nut in the forum should be sentenced to 1 year with sloan.
Cruel and unusual punishment!
No one should have to spend a year with Sammy the Sloan.
Incredibly poor judgement for a judge. He’ll likely bring home some money from the ordeal, but only at a much greater cost–generating an intense greedy hatred, tormenting a struggling family, and tarnishing the legal system with labels of “unfair” and “ridiculuous”. Truly pathetic.
If somebody makes threats of suing you for nonsense you should tell the person that you will counter sue if he has the guts to do it. People like to say that they will sue, but you can also counter sue and the person will not take the risk if his case is weak
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Absolutely outrageous. I hope he loses his judgeship immediately. But then I guess they are all corrupt.
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He really should. He’s in the Justice “Biz”, as they say, so it seems incredibly stupid to be too ostentatiously unjust in public. With judgment like that, it’s hard to have any confidence in any decisions he renders.
Obviously no pair of pants is worth $65,000,000, and the suit is a harassment suit meant to make them spend money defending themselevs from frivolous charges. I’m not sure I’d agree that it’s people like this who give the system a bad name, though. The system already has a bad name, and abuses like this are natural.
The system is set up so that anyone can sue anyone for anything. You don’t have to have a case in order to get someone into court, and once they’re there, they have to spend gobs of cash just to be there at all, guilty or innocent. It’s only natural that such abuses would take place. Same as if you have a chess tournament with no cheating precautions in place. Of course people are going to abuse it. The problem is bad organization, the cheaters, though wrong also, just called attention to how bad it was.
What these cleaners need to do is hire a bloodsucker… er, lawyer, of their own, willing and eager to try to countersue the judge for a hundred million or so, for pain, suffering and harassment.
They won’t get it, but at least they may get the judge to have to pay their legal costs. If not, they could be in big trouble. And this is a problem with the system, not just with abusers. If I don’t like you for any reason, I can try to make the both of us take a money bath in the legal system. And if I can afford it better than you can, too bad for you.
I agree with Graeme, just threaten to counter sue ! The person will think again before sueing.
The idiot who made these threats is a lawyer. She’ll win but it will cost her $ and he knows it. He’s also involved suing the cyclying federation TWICE before so this is nothing new to him. Now he’s threatening to harm the FOC members.
Does anyone want to help me form a class action lawsuit? This dimishes confidence in the justice system, which I personally value at a loss over my lifetime of $65,000,000.00 (the price I might be out if a similiar thing happened to me.)
There are about 300,000,000 people in the U.S., so including them in the class action lawsuit would mean a fine to the judge of some $1,950,000,000.
I think this case has exactly the same merit as the judges case, i.e. if he wins that case, we should win this one.
I am always thinking that there should be more legal issues in Chess.
For example if Garry Kasparov comes up with a novelty in, say the Najdorf, he should be able to patent that move. Don’t you think? He spent many many hours trying to think of it. Why wouldn’t he deserve protection of his intellectual property? A patent makes sense here.
Then when anyone uses the move in a tournament or on the ICC (home games would be inpractical enforcement) they need to pay Kasparov whatever he is asking for the use of the move.
Prices would be controlled through competition. For example if Topolov’s novelty were less expensive than Kasparov’s novelty more people would play it and force Kasparov to lower his prices.
The royalty fees would be collected by the Tournment Director at the end of every round and depend on the number of novelties one played during the game. This could be calculated with a computer’s help.
A royalty system would give Grand Masters great incentive to be original and would help the problem of too many draws for two reasons. They would want to invent income generating novelties of their own and playing too many novelties of other people would become quite expensive. Voila! …the end of draws!
Just a thought on how to make the Grand Master’s life better and improve the game of Chess.
This is one of the must unjust stories I have ever read. Yet I have a feeling that he might just get reinstated as a judge for another ten years because the people on the board are probably his golfing buddies and don’t care anyway.
I just sent the patent office patent requests for every unpublished move combination in the sicilian najdorf, both sides, up to move 27 (this was a long list, I had it generated by Fritz).
My asking price for you using any of these off-book moves is about the same as a judges pair of pants goes for these days.
I am one for the judge’s side. I have had some bad experiences with cleaners myself. Some are rather negligent, I had several pants destroyed by improper handling and had no proof or time to bother with claiming or suing. In this case, if they promised same day service and cannot deliver and even lost the pants, this indicates gross negligence and the judge’s claim has some meritt, to protect the customers.
Th owners of the cleaning company are portreyed as the victims, but they know very well how many dozens and hundreds of pants and shirts they lost, destroyed and misplaced, and they also know most claims are never made.
Sorry… having people pay to use a patented move would create a TIERED SYSTEM that would be UNFAIR to players without the financial means to afford the best variations. This would only allow them to play openings and moves that are already in the public domain like the Ruy Lopez for example.
This idea won’t work…sorry
If the cleaners ruined the pants, then they should be liable for damages. In a rational system, this would likely be 2-3 times the actual cost to replace the pants. In an insane system, a horrible judge could make a claim for 65 million.
He should lose his job immediately, for demonstrated incompetence in the field of justice.
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There are 2 sides of the coin are present here. One from cleaner side and one from so called victim side. If cleaner is really misbehaving, he should pay the price for the same. I think this blog is about is it fair enough to ask for compensation of $65,000,000.
The need for the punishment should solely to avoid another incident happening in similar way. The amount of money also decide, how effective the punishment could be. If he made more $65m it is worthy discussing whether the judgement is correct or not. If it is less than $65m, the punishment makes no sense at all.
Even if they made more than $65m, let us say $100m (in 2 years?? I would love the job except for the punishment!!! :-)), we definitly should see what shall be the amount he should pay for.
The judgement more or less says, it doesn’t matter how much you get paid, if you do mistake, the punishment is so huge, you shall commit sucide. Well the same punishment is not applicable for stealing $10m from a bank.
I’m not favouring the cleaner, but I wish, he could live a life by accepting the punishment. But the amount of punishment is unimaginable.
I wonder what the legal system would say, if he files bankruptcy. Will the court accepts the same, or he will be put behind the bars?
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Considering the fact that the cleaner offered to pay $12,000 for the customer’s lost pants, dissatisfaction and inconvenience and the customer refused said payment, how can anyone say the customer is being reasonable? The suit cost the customer $1000. As soon as the customer refused settlement he showed his true colors. He is simply using the system to harrass the cleaner. This is a case that should not even be heard. The fact that the customer is a judge makes this farsical joke a nightmare. He is what is wrong with the system. Should customers receive compensation for damages from vendors? Yes. But it should be reasonable compensation. The judge is not making any point other than showing he is willing to perpetuate a failed system to his own advantage. My own opinion of him is that he is a sad little man vying for all the power he can grab. He should be removed from the bench and dis-barred. Getting rid of the broken parts of the system (people like him) is the only way to fix it. What we need is a “Your case is too ridiculous to even be consider” law.
It will come down to whether Americans strictly follow the rules even when it’s abused, bend the rules to serve justice. We need a tort reform, and not just a reform after he finishes abusing the system.
No immigrant will immigrate to U.S. if Pearson is granted more than $1000-3000.
If America wants to show itself as non-racist and fair then it needs to remove Peason, fine him, and make him compensate the Chung’s for mentally torturing them.
Unbelievable! It’s bad enough when uneducated, greedy individuals initiate frivolous law suits to waste the courts’ time. Too many law-abiding businesses and individuals, who are only trying to make a decent living for themselves, have been and continue to be coerced daily by these superior-than-thou types using this country’s laws in an erroneous manner.
The plaintiffs’ conduct in these types of cases is nothing less than unethical and immoral. Their intent is not only to receive a ridiculously excessive amount of free money for doing nothing but being stupid, while – in the process – bogging down the courts with useless paperwork, but also to prevent REAL criminal cases from being tried, and to make our justice system nothing less than a sick joke. No wonder the other countries laugh at us. They should. We do.
And, why are most of these cases, like this one, started? According to the facts stated, it appears that bigotry, hatred, jealousy, lack of compassion – and a tiny, common error blown WAY out of proportion was involved. Wow! Something insignificant (and probably cheap as well) was temporarily misplaced. BIG DEAL! Who hasn’t misplaced some object at some time? I’d be willing to bet that the plaintiff in this case has, too.
But, a “supposedly educated” individual bringing such frivolous nonsense such as this into the courts is not only ludicrous, but also unforgivable. And consuming over two years’ time in the process of executing this perverted joke is preposterous! These cases have nothing to do with justice – and everything to do with greed.
Supposedly we, the spectators, are to assume that such plaintiffs have NEVER made any mistakes. Gee — that’s perfection. I’ve yet to meet a PERFECT person. If you’re human, you make mistakes. DUH!
The presiding judge should not only throw this case out of the courts in disdain, but should also disbar the plaintiff from practicing law and bestow on him a “stupidity” fine – at least half the amount he is trying to extort from someone else.
What moron set the precedents on allowing these types of frivolous cases to enter the system, anyway? If all frivolous cases brought before the courts were treated in such manner — having the PLAINTIFFS pay restitution for the courts’ time, the defendants’ time, the defendants attorneys’ time and an additional amount that is half of what they are trying to extort, more than likely a lot of cases would suddenly disappear off the books, leaving only those cases that are, indeed, criminal cases.
Personally, I agree with only ONE thing the plaintiff intimates – NO business should display a sign that states “Satisfaction guaranteed” because apparently no one these days can be satisfied.