Monday, May 14, 2007

Roy L. Pearson, Dick o' the Week

I did not have many thoughts worth sharing today so I thought I would concentrate on awarding the Dick of the Week award to one Roy L. Pearson, an administrative law judge in Washington D.C. whose claim to fame is that he is suing a mom and pop cleaners in D.C. for $67 million dollars over a pair of pants. I'll say that again for those of you in the back of the room not paying attention. A judge in Washington D.C. is suing a family operated business for $67 million over a pair of pants. This is after turning down settlement offers for $3000, $4600, and $12,000. The cost of the original suit was $1150. From the ABC News story:

Plaintiff Roy Pearson, a judge in Washington, D.C., says in court papers that he's been through the ringer over a lost pair of prized pants he wanted to wear on his first day on the bench.

He says in court papers that he has endured "mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort."

He says he was unable to wear that favorite suit on his first day of work.

He's suing for 10 years of weekend car rentals so he can transport his dry cleaning to another store.

The lawsuit is based in large part on Pearson's seemingly pained admission that he was taken in by the oldest and most insidious marketing tool in the dry cleaning industry arsenal.

"Satisfaction Guaranteed."

I would like to take a moment to point out the authors of this piece, Jim Avila, Chris Francescani & Mandy Harris, have struck the perfect tone. It is pretty clear to me where their sympathies lie, particularly after this bit:

The ABC News Law & Justice Unit has calculated that for $67 million Pearson could buy 84,115 new pairs of pants at the $800 value he placed on the missing trousers in court documents. If you stacked those pants up, they would be taller than eight Mount Everests. If you laid them side by side, they would stretch for 48 miles.

I want to repeat more of the article here, however the further on I read the more pissed I get at Pearson. This was not the first time this particular cleaning place misplaced a pair of trousers belong to the Honorable Jackass Pearson. There is the old saying that begins "Fool me once," which seems pretty applicable, or the Latin saying caveat emptor, or "let the buyer beware."

Above and beyond the stupidity emenating from Roy L. Pearson, esquire, is the very real fact that his actions have a very real affect on the owners of the store, an immigrant couple from Korea. From the ABC News article:

"It's affecting us first of all financially, because of all the lawyer's fees," Jin Chung said. "For two years, we've been paying lawyer fees. ... We've gotten bad credit as well, and secondly, it's been difficult mentally and physically because of the level of stress."

Later, Soo Chung broke down in tears.

"I would have never thought it would have dragged on this long," she told ABC News. "I don;t want to live here anymore. It's been so diffuicult. I just want to go home, go back to Korea."

It is disgusting that some insignificant fraction of a man has managed to destroy the American Dream for these people.

A couple of people have suggested that this fucktard's motivations could be racial as he is black and the owners Korean, two groups which apparently have trouble getting along. (Why is it that minorities seem to always out-racist the racists?) However the more likely explaination is that Pearson is bat-shit crazy. Here is an excerpt of the appellate court decision regarding his divorce which I think is telling:

...unless husband [Pearson] met her conditions for reconciliation. These conditions included husband changing his behavior toward the couple's family, changing his controlling behavior, and becoming financially responsible.

And:

The trial court found that husband was substantially responsible for "excessive driving up" of the legal costs by "threatening both wife and her lawyer with disbarment [sic]," and creating unnecessary litigation.

The entire decision can be read here and is rather chuckle-worthy in parts.

For more on this you can read a piece by Sherman Joyce, the president of the American Tort Reform Association, or this letter from Melvin Welles, a former chief administrative law judge at the National Labor Relations Board, to the Washington Post.

I think it is clear from this that Pearson is a litigious ass and is well deserving of the Opiate Tested and Weng Weng Approved Dick o' the Week Award. (And apparently if you want to contact him all you have to do is search through the comments on this post for his address, phone number, and email address. God I love the internet!)

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