'PANTS' lawsuit forces closure of dry cleaner's stores

from JoeUser Forums

News reports in the D.C. area last nite (TV/Radio) and this a.m. (newspapers, always lagging behind with yesterday's news today) note that the Korean owners of a small group of dry cleaning stores were forced to close/sell a couple of their shops thanks to the continually mounting legal bills they face as the {donkey}-hat plaintiff, Administrative Law Judge (only keeping the title because for as long as he is involved in a case he can't finish his term on the bench and likely won't find it renewed in the future) Roy L. Pearson is appealing his earlier loss in court.

Sadly this {in my opinion} CLOWN -- ooops, I really shouldn't use that label as it seriously denigrates the fine people in the clown profession -- who was granted more than enough leverage by the judge that originally heard the case just won't give it up.  He lost, not just fair and square, but very unfairly and very non-square if you are sitting in the seat of the Chungs, the South Korean immigrants that ran the dry cleaning shop.  The amount of leeway granted to Pearson was well above and beyond what most litigants in court could expect, mostly because the original judge went well out of the way to see that there were going to be no procedural errors that would let this individual, with his apparent intelligence deficit, get back into court on appeal and overturn the limited justice that was originally done when he lost the case the first time out.

Yet again this case screams for LOSER PAYS and other necessary tort reforms that will never happen as long as the trial lawyers association good friends run the Congress.  If there was LOSER PAYS involved here, this idiot (again, my opinion as we don't yet have factual proof, outside of his just pressing the case to begin with -- no pun intended in using the word pressing here) would already have been on the hook for the 10s of thousands of dollars that he has cost the poor couple that he sued.

While I hate to wish ill upon people, the thought crosses my mind that perhaps having this individual catch a shoelace in a manhole cover in the middle of street as traffic approaches too quickly might not be a bad thing.  Then again, were that to happen, there'd be absolutely no chance for the Chungs to hopefully eventually collect any of the fees that they have paid out back from this bozo.  (Again, with all due respect and apologies to the venerable Bozo the Clown.)

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9,579 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top

The news reports I heard/saw on TV did make it clear that the Chungs didn't close all of their locations, but even having to close 1 (in this case 2) is wrong.  They'll have put people out of work because of this apparently never ending lawsuit.

I expect 10 years from now Pearson will have his day arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, or at least he'll be trying to between now and whenever the case is finally competely ended.  Between now and then he'll continue to collect a salary from the District of Columbia that he doesn't deserve as he hears absolutely no cases since he is involved in a case himself.

What a scam.

Hopefully someone on the city council in D.C., or perhaps in the U.S. Congress (who typically micromanages the affairs of the District of Columbia), will pass some law that states that judges that are involved in litigation of their own making *may not* draw a salary while they are unable to perform their duties and make it apply retroactively to Mr. Pearson so he'll wind up in serious arrears to the District of Columbia Treasury.  That would start to be justice in my book.

Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top

I feel for you.

Back in 1999, Entrepreneur Magazine sued me personally as well as Stardock because we had a game called Entrepreneur.  They claimed they owned the name Entrepreneur in every form even though they did not have a trademark for use in a computer game at the time the game was published (I think they have since).  But the argument that someone would be confused with their magazine and our game was absurd.

Unfortunately, because we don't have a loser-pays system, we had to settle out of court and call our sequel by a different name even though the name Entrepreneur makes far more sense for the name of the game than The Corporate Machine does. (of course, if they had sued now, that we're a lot bigger, we would have now had the resources to crush them as I doubt they have the capital we do these days and our case was very strong).

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
That's a problem with our legal system and probably the goal of this asshat in the first place. He surely knew he wouldn't win but simply wanted to drive them out of business. A loser pays system would fix a lot of this bullshit.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top

I feel for you.

Not me personally thankfully, but it still sucks to see someone ruining the legal system in this manner.  I hate that people can abuse the system this way, and really feel so sorry for the Chungs.  I don't know them personally, but the idea that they came here (I believe legally) and worked so hard towards the 'American dream' only to lose much, if not all of it, because of this suit just makes me feel horrible for them.

Like your recent articles on liberals and capping jobs, salaries, income, etc., in this case what the idiotic pants suit guy is missing is that he just put several people that were working in these shops out of work.  In his zeal for abusing the legal system, he's sucking down income that he doesn't deserve for work he can't do (and probably couldn't do properly if he was allowed to try to do it) because of his involvement in the court system as a litigant, and he has killed off jobs for people that I'm certain were in no way getting rich.

Like I said in the original article, I almost wish he'd meet his maker by some accident soon, but then there'd be no way for him to get countersued or otherwise find himself a victim of the court system in some way that would put money back into the pockets of the people he's ruining now.