Today's Washington Post had an excellent, but disturbing, column by Marc Fisher about a D.C. lawyer who has sued a local dry cleaners for $65 million over a pair of missing pants.
Here's Fisher's column.
In a nutshell, the lawyer, whose name is Roy Pearson, took a pair of pants to his neighborhood dry cleaners in the District for alterations, and they lost his pants. It happens every now and then. Somehow, Pearson has managed to parlay this into a long-running court case in which he is seeking $65 million after turning down settlement offers of as much as $12,000 for a friggin' pair of pants!
Now Fisher was pretty restrained, letting the facts speak for themselves. (Like Pearson's logic that the cleaners should pay for him to lease a car every weekend for the next 10 years because he currently doesn't have a car and due to his cleaners' bad service he will have to go to another cleaners, which is too far away to walk to.)
The question Fisher might have asked, however, is how did our legal system let this get so out of hand? The system has failed.
First, the judge handling this case, who has voiced concerns that Pearson is "acting in bad faith" should go a lot further: he should dismiss the case, consider assessing legal costs as a sanction against Pearson, and refer the matter to the D.C. Bar for an investigation.
Second, the D.C. Bar should, at least now that Fisher has opened the profession up as a laughing stock, launch its own investigation into Pearson's conduct. The issuance of a law license should not be a license to terrorize. The D.C. Bar has some very legitimate issues to look into here, and if Pearson is, in fact, acting in bad faith or otherwise abusing his privilege to practice law, he should be disciplined.
Third, according to Fisher, Pearson is himself an administrative law judge in the District. The Commission overseeing the ALJ's should also launch an investigation into his conduct, which appears to reflect badly on the ALJ's.
This is, really, an outrageous story, and one that makes the Curmudgeon glad he's no longer practicing law. Can the people who are supposed to safeguard the public from truly malicious lawyers take appropriate action? We'll see.
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2 comments:
I'd say this gives lawyers a bad name, but .... naaaah, never mind.
Oh come on, this hardly worhty of our attention. Ok, they lost his pants (and lied about it, too according to the article), they should pay. 65 million seems a tad excessive, but so does a bar investigation. Let the case come to its fair conclusion through the system, then consider an investigation for abuse of process.
Maybe he can find a DC jury to give him 65 million. Having sat on a DC jury, anything is possible. Demanding he get investigated just ensures that he'll have to go to trial, as it will be the sure-fire way to prove the reasonableness of his claim.
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