Unlike Roy Pearson in the celebrated D.C. case, Charleston, W.V. lawyer Richard D. Jones isn’t demanding $67 million from the dry cleaner, nor is he a sitting judge (his practice is in civil defense). About the only visible angle that distinguishes the case from the entirely ordinary: Jones wants punitive damages from defendants Pressed For Time and Lisa Williams. (W.V. Record, more).
You knew it was coming dept.: Roy Pearson wants $1 million for being deprived of his District of Columbia judgeship. (Emil Steiner blog/Washington Post, Kerr @ Volokh, Laconic Law Blog; earlier).
National Journal’s The Gate has the story on the latest setback for the pants judge (Nov. 14). A committee concluded that he did not demonstrate “appropriate judgment and judicial temperament,” but apparently did not specifically invoke the Breeches of Doom affair. Our coverage is here.
A press release from their lawyers, Manning & Sossamon, announces that the Chung family of Washington, D.C is closing Custom Cleaners, their dry cleaning establishment. They continue to operate a separate location under the name of Happy Cleaners and last year closed one known as Parks FabriCare. According to the release, the family decided to close Custom Cleaners “due to the revenue losses and emotional toll resulting from the Pearson v. Chung lawsuit”. More: Marc Fisher @ WaPo, WSJ law blog, Betsy Newmark, Joe Gandelman, Mark Steyn.
Are you really surprised? The D.C. Court of Appeals’ average time for appeal is 575 days, implying a wait until 2009 for a decision, but one would hope a simple case like this could be disposed of faster.
1. Yet another Roy Pearson update: the Washington Post, confirming a previous rumor, reports that he’s closer to losing his job. The Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges (CSTALJ?) has voted to start the process of terminating him, by sending him a letter notifying him that he may not be reappointed to his job. Of course, the procedure alone makes the story a perfect fit for Overlawyered. Pearson can’t just be fired; that would be too easy. First, his boss had to make a formal recommendation. Then, the Commission had to decide to send that letter. And now?
Pearson is not out of work yet. The letter is a key step, though, alerting him that his reappointment is in jeopardy. He has 15 days to file a rebuttal and could push for reappointment by appearing before the commission at its next meeting in September.
The wonders of public employment. And then if he’s turned down, of course, he can sue!
Apparently trying to destroy a business by using the legal system to extort millions from the owners isn’t his big sin; his big sin is being rude to his boss:
Concerns about Pearson’s temperament as an administrative law judge preceded the publicity about the lawsuit this spring. The letter from the commission focuses on those concerns, addressing the lawsuit only briefly.
In e-mails sent to his fellow judges and cited in the letter, Pearson’s contempt for Chief Administrative Law Judge Tyrone T. Butler was evident. In one of the missives, he spoke of protecting himself from any attempt by Butler “to knife” him. In another, he questioned Butler’s competence and integrity.
Incidentally, he was serving a two year term, but if he wins reappointment, it will be for a ten year term.
2. Updating a story from Mar. 25, a federal judge has banned the navy from using sonar in training exercises:
Cooper said it was never easy to balance the interests of wildlife with those of national security. But in this case, she said, environmental lawyers have made a persuasive case that the potential harm to whales and other marine life outweighs any harm to the Navy while the court case proceeds.
Because, clearly, a bunch of lawyers are in the best position to design United States naval strategy.
(Other whale-sonar lawsuit coverage: May 17, Jul. 2006)
3. Remember the Kentucky Fen-Phen scandal? The one in which the class action attorneys were accused of misplacing $60 million of their clients’ money into their own pockets? (We’ve covered it May 20 and earlier) Well, a federal judge has now ruled that they need to repay $62.1 million to their clients. So far. Still to come: a ruling on punitive damages, a criminal trial, and the suit against Cincinnati attorney Stan Chesley, who’s accused of the same wrongdoing. (AP/Forbes)
(AM post bumped for PM update.)
A judicial panel is still deciding whether the Great American Pants-Suit plaintiff will keep his job as an administrative judge. A delayed decision is expected early next week.
Update to the update: Marc Fisher is reporting that the decision will be to start the bureaucratic process of firing Pearson. Amazingly, the chief ALJ recommended reappointing Pearson&mdash:until Pearson showed his typical good judgment by blasting the chief ALJ in an internal email as “evil,” causing his target to change his mind. Pearson will be entitled to a hearing (and who knows how many rounds of appeals) before he is officially fired; since April, he has been in a fully-paid no-work position as an “attorney-advisor.”
The Associated Press and WSJ Law Blog cover Tuesday’s event, which was co-sponsored by ATRA and the Chamber. Raised so far: more than $64,000. Earlier coverage of the Roy Pearson pants case here (cross-posted from Point of Law).
…has requested reconsideration of the decision against him, and has filed a delusional brief in support. Rest assured his damages claims are more reasonable than before: he is now seeking only $35 million in damages.
The Chamber of Commerce fundraiser for the Chungs’ defense fund to pay $83,000 in attorneys’ fees defending against this suit is July 24.
WSJ law blog has more details on Judge Roy Pearson’s plan to file for a reconsideration of the verdict against his pants suit, and also has a copy of the Chungs’ motion for attorneys fees, of which they’ve now racked up $83,000 (Lattman, Jul. 6).
Anthony Sebok’s Findlaw column on the Pearson pants suit cites Overlawyered and repeats two points regular readers of Overlawyered and Point of Law have seen before:
Yet Sebok concludes that there is no epidemic of fraudulent litigation. I suppose it depends on one’s definition of “epidemic” and “fraudulent”; as we’ve noted before, Bill Lerach successfully swiped several billion dollars in nuisance settlements bringing meritless Enron litigation, helped by an erroneous district-court class certification. (Such erroneous class certifications helped make Madison County a judicial hellhole.) Sebok acknowledges that “lawyer-driven” cases where plaintiffs act as their own attorneys might merit loser-pays rules to deter meritless lawsuits that would be cheaper to settle than fight, but what makes most class-action litigation any less “lawyer-driven” such that they should be subject to different rules? (Cross-posted from Point of Law.)
By the way, Pearson has announced that he will appeal the trial court’s decision against him.
As I have repeatedly noted, the only reason the Chungs can be said to have been vindicated is that Judge Roy Pearson is more delusional and less sinister than the typical trial-lawyer extortionist. Had Judge Pearson accepted the $12,000 settlement the Chungs felt forced to offer between the expense of litigation and the small risk of Pearson mounting a case that successfully resulted in the giant fines imposed by DC consumer-fraud law, Pearson would have had a five-digit profit, and the Chungs would be out tens of thousands of dollars in litigation and settlement expense without any hope of recoupment. As Michael Greve demonstrates in “Harm-Less Lawsuits”, this is more than hypothetical: in consumer-fraud lawsuits alone, billions of dollars have been extracted from innocent defendants.
DMI’s Kia Franklin’s defense of her claim that the travesty of justice we have seen in Pearson shows that the system works? “Now, had Pearson collected the $12,000 settlement, we would have a whole new hypothetical and a whole new set of questions about the terms of the settlement (Would we have known the settlement amount? Would they have been able to publicize this? What were the lawyers’ strategies?) and the consequences thereof. So we can’t prematurely say that it would pay off for him.” Franklin goes on to deny that trial lawyer abuse even exists—a perhaps necessary position for her to take, given that the top of any list of abusers would include the indicted law firm Milberg Weiss, which funds her fellowship, in part from the successful extortion of billions of dollars using the same in terrorem tactics as Pearson.
As Peter Nordberg notes in the Overlawyered comments, “If [Pearson] is indeed representative, there should be thousands of cases just like it, and we may as well get to discussing those.” And indeed we should.
As we’ve covered, Roy Pearson lost his $67 million lawsuit against his dry cleaners. Predictably, Bizarro-Overlawyered is trumpeting the outcome as evidence that the system works, that the “system has effective, built-in checks against such things.” I doubt many Overlawyered readers buy into that spin, but just in case, here are a few reminders about this case that, to the extent it had any merit at all, should have been a small claims suit:
WSJ Law Blog has the (long) opinion and (short) judgment in the case. Professor Bainbridge notes the pertinence of the legal principle of “puffery”, under which Pearson was no more justified in demanding the literal enforcement of the Chungs’ “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign than would other customers be justified in suing United Air Lines after a grumpy flight for not providing “friendly skies”, Exxon for not putting a genuine “tiger in your tank”, Fox News for being less than “fair and balanced”, and so forth. Amygdala observes, of the $12,000 settlement offer that Pearson spurned from the Chungs:
Which is to say, if you’re a lawyer, or just knowledgeable about legal phrasing and documents, and willing to spend a certain amount of time generating and mailing documents, you can wind up being offered $12,000 if you’re sufficiently obnoxious and persistent, no matter how feeble, frivolous, and meretricious your claim is.
That’s a well-known, old, story, to be sure, but still worthy of note now and again.
And the WSJ Law Blog has an earlier interview with the Chungs’ lawyer, Christopher Manning, including this pertinent excerpt:
How’d all the publicity start?
A local neighborhood newspaper first picked up the story. Then WJLA – the local ABC affiliate — picked up the story, with me holding the pants. After that, Marc Fisher’s [Washington Post] column ran in late April which really set it off. [The story has since been featured on Today, Nightline, Good Morning America, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN and a host of other networks.]
Gosh. You mean the pants suit didn’t become a big worldwide story, as some of our friends in the trial bar have hinted, just because those nefarious legal reformers were looking for a far-out case to publicize? Next you’ll be telling us that Stella Liebeck’s McDonald’s hot-coffee award became a huge story because it was something the press found newsworthy and the public wanted to talk about, rather than because reformers plotted deep into the night to hype it.
I was a guest this hour on the BBC Radio 4 evening program “PM” with Eddie Mair, discussing the Roy Pearson lost-pants case. While most of our items on this site inevitably come from the USA, note that we have a section devoted to items from the UK as well.
A judge has ruled in favor of the defendant Chung family in the mishandled-dry-cleaning case, and awarded them (relatively minor) court costs. Pearson is expected to appeal; the Chungs’ lawyer says the family expects to ask eventually that he also be made to pay their attorney fees, but D.C. law sets the bar for such a request relatively high, so it’s by no means something they can count on. Coverage: Washington Post and its Marc Fisher and OFF/beat blogs, more. Earlier: here and here.
More: And here’s word of a fundraiser for the Chungs’ legal defense, next month in D.C., sponsored by the Chamber and ATRA.
Point of Law Volokh