WASHINGTON — A judge ruled Monday that no pair of pants is worth $54 million, rejecting a lawsuit that took a dry cleaner's promise of "Satisfaction Guaranteed" to its most litigious extreme.
Roy L. Pearson originally sought $67 million from the defendants, claiming they lost a pair of trousers from a blue and maroon suit, then tried to give him a pair a pair of charcoal gray pants that he said were not his.
Pearson arrived at the amount by adding up years of alleged law violations and almost $2 million in common law fraud claims. He then lowered the amount he was seeking to $54 million.
But District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that the owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city's consumer protection law by failing to live up to Pearson's expectations of the "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign once displayed in the store window.
"A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands" or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.
Bartnoff wrote that Pearson, an administrative law judge, failed to prove that the pants the dry cleaner tried to return were not the pants he took in for alterations.
Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung. The court costs amount to just over $1,000 for photocopying, filing and similar expenses, according to the Chungs' attorney.
A motion to recover the Chungs' tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees will be considered later.
If there's any justice in this case, Pearson will be ordered to pay the Chungs' legal fees as well, thus punishing the judge for his remarkable lack of judgment in pursuing this case.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment