Remember the guy who was suing his dry cleaner for lost pants for a obscene amt of $65 miilion?
He lost and had to pay the court costs and may have to pay their attorney's fees as well!
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In an extremely cautious and detailed ruling, D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff this morning said that Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson deserves not a penny of the $67 million that he once demanded in compensation for a mixup at his neighborhood dry cleaners.
But astonishingly, Bartnoff said not a word in her decision about Pearson's handling of the case, or about the size of his demand, or about the bizarre scale of his legal assault on the immigrant family who own Custom Cleaners on Bladensburg Road NE.
Perhaps the judge didn't need to: She spoke with her actions instead, awarding the Chung family the costs of the case--an unusual move in a civil case in which each side would ordinarily be expected to pay their own costs. (But awarding costs is not the same as awarding attorney's fees--the big financial blow in any legal matter--and Judge Bartnoff said she would make that decision at a later date.) The Chungs were laid low by Pearson's two-year pursuit of the case; their legal fees wiped out their savings and forced them to consider moving back to their native land of South Korea. In addition, as the Chungs' lawyer, Christopher Manning, pointed out this morning, the Chungs still face the potentially enormous and almost certain costs of defending themselves against an almost-inevitable appeal of Bartnoff's decision by Pearson.
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The Washington Post Online.