HoodaThunk?

Judge (and I use the term here only as an official title, not intended to connote any particular efficacy in the man’s judgement) Roy Pearson is continuing his campaign for the title of “Most Embarrassing Excuse for a Judge.” Seems after getting smacked around for trying to sue a mom-and-pop dry cleaner for $54 million dollars over a pair of pants, he’s decided to push the issue and claim that the judge who tossed the case committed a “fundamental legal error.”

A customer who sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants has asked the judge who threw out the widely mocked case to reconsider, saying she committed a “fundamental legal error.”

Roy L. Pearson, a local administrative law judge, argued Wednesday that District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff failed to address his legal claims. Bartnoff had ruled that the business owners did not violate the city’s consumer protection law by failing to live up to his expectations of a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store.

“The court effectively substituted a guarantee of satisfaction with ‘reasonable’ limits and preconditions for the unconditional and unambiguous guarantee of satisfaction the defendant-merchant chose to advertise for seven years,” Pearson wrote. “That was a fundamental legal error.”

Well, to this layman, it sounds more like a rational and reasonable interpretation of the term “guarantee of satisfaction” than Judge Pearson’s tripe. The lawyer representing the dry cleaner says this is far less a matter of a legitimate legal issue and far more one of a guy trying to use the judicial system as a club to destroy a couple’s lives. I agree, and I’d add that it seems that becoming a judge has seriously gone to this guy’s head.

Let’s just assume for a moment that the dry cleaner lost this guy’s pants. Definitely not good from a business practice perspective, I grant you. But where Pearson has gone over the cliff is his assertion that this “guarantee of satisfaction” means that the dry cleaner must do anything and everything the dissatisfied customer wants, without question and without regard to whether what is wanted can actually be done. This guy wants his pants back. The dry cleaner lost them, probably by accidentally including them in with someone else’s order. If they can’t magically pull them out of thin air and hand them over, is that something they should be sued for millions over? Is it reasonable to conclude that posting a sign that says “satisfaction guaranteed” means that one is then held hostage the whimsy of anyone who brings in a suit to be cleaned? Can someone be held legally culpable for another person’s definition of being satisfied?

To the point: is there anything, save the immediate closure of the dry cleaner and the bankruptcy of the owners, that would satisfy this clown?

Judge Pearson has made a mockery of our system of justice. How many other serious cases have been held up or simply abandoned because there have been court resources dedicated to this farce? This case should be dismissed with prejudice, Judge Pearson should be saddled with all court costs, he should be required to pay the attorney’s fees of the couple he’s harassed for 2 years now, and – if things were really just – he should be removed from his judge’s position. Any judge who honestly thinks that suing for $54 million over a lost pair of pants clearly lacks the character (the judgment, if you will) to be in the position of authority a judgeship represents. Just as clearly, he can’t cut it.