Why I Never Believed Judge Roy L Pearson
Soo Chung, left, and Jin Chung, represented
by their lawyer Chris Manning, standing,
who are being sued by D.C. judge Roy
Pearson, right, June 13, 2007.
Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal
After the most egregious case of frivolous litigation in American history, The Roy Pearson vs Chung Dry Cleaner Suit has finally been put to rest. Roy Pearson, the former administrative law judge who unsuccessfully sued his dry cleaner for $54 million over a pair of lost pants, finally lost his case before the D.C. Court of Appeals which handed down its ruling today. So unless Pearson makes this a Federal Case, this ordeal for the Chungs and the rest of us, is over.
At first the Chungs thought they lost his pants but eventually found them but when offered to Pearson he stubbornly denied that they were his. I have had numerous experiences with lost items. 30 years ago I had a number of jewelry stores from New York to California handling hundreds of thousands of repairs. During the repair process, a ring may go to a lapidary for a missing stone, then to a setter to get it pronged, then to a polisher, then to a plater and despite stringent controls, one in a thousand repairs may go missing, and rarely lost altogether.
There is no point in lying to a customer, if a repair is missing you can't just say that it's being held for ransom by terrorists, you just admit that it's temporarily missing. Sometimes the envelope in which the repair is held is filed under the wrong name, a repair person may file Joan Smith under Joan instead of Smith or read a repair ticket as 4169 instead of 1469 and misfile it. In 999 out of a 1000 missing occurrences we eventually find the repair.
But all the while that it is missing, the customer recalls the missing ring as having had huge diamonds or that the necklace was in fact very, very heavy with pure gold. It is when we point out that we measure, weigh, and describe all the jewelry accurately on the customer's own receipt that the customer backs off on their imagined losses. The reason to weigh any jewelry being repaired is that people, even if honest, tend to remember things inaccurately. I remember one time we were missing a strand of pearls, the owner recalled that they were the size of gumballs and 30 inches long. When we found it, it turned out to be one-quarter the size she thought they were and only 20 inches long. It was only when we pointed out the description on her own repair receipt that finally convinced her she was misremembering.
Settling Only Encourages Bad Behavior
There are a few deceitful customers who when told something was missing would bring in drawings they made to convince us how large and valuable the item was and would even bring us to court hoping we would settle rather than spend the money with lawyers. My philosophy is that I would prefer to spend ten thousand dollars in court expenses than give a thousand dollars undeservedly to anyone. The minute people think you will settle rather than do what is right, they will take advantage of you.
When someone stiffs me for 100 dollars on a credit card, I go to court even if it costs me a thousand. The word has gotten around, no one takes advantage of my business. They know I don't settle.
If General Motors 50 years ago had told the United Auto Workers to take a hike, sure they would have lost some business to Ford or Chrysler - but only momentarily. In the end they would have been a stronger company, but they settled for the easy way. Now everyone is paying for that mistake.
But I digress - When the Chungs told Roy Pearson they found his pants, and he denied that they were his, I knew exactly what was going on. I've seen his type hundreds of times before. He didn't want the pants, he wanted something more than he deserved and because he was an administrative judge he thought he had an edge in getting it. Happily, because of his hubris he lost his job as a judge at the Office of Administrative Hearings; although if there were true justice in this world, Roy L Pearson would be thrown up against a wall and shot.
