US:Roy L Pearson now knows his trousers are not worth $54 million (€40 million).
In fact, the lawsuit he filed when a pair of trousers went missing at a local dry cleaner's has set him back $1,000 in court costs and potentially hundreds of thousands in legal costs following a Washington DC court ruling.
The saga began two years ago when Pearson was appointed an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia, which means he conducts hearings on claims concerning government programmes. Required to wear suits to work every day, Pearson found five old ones in his wardrobe - dating back to days when he was trimmer - and took them for alterations to a neighbourhood dry cleaner.
When he went to retrieve the suits, one of them was missing its trousers. He asked for a $1,000 refund, the full price of the suit, he said, but was rebuffed.
So Pearson, a graduate of Northwestern University's law school, did what lawyers do. He sued.
The suit over his suit was not just any suit. Arguing that the dry cleaner had failed to live up to the "satisfaction guaranteed" sign in its window, Pearson demanded $67 million.
He later reduced the amount to $54 million: $500,000 in lawyer's fees (he represented himself), $2 million for "discomfort, inconvenience and mental distress", $15,000 to rent a car every weekend to drive to another dry cleaner and $51.5 million to set up a fund to help other dissatisfied local consumers sue businesses.
In Monday's ruling, however, Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff took Pearson to the cleaners.
In a 23-page finding, she wrote: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'satisfaction guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands."
She also said Pearson had "not met his burden of proving that the pants the defendants attempted to return to him were not the pants he brought in for alteration".
About a week after Pearson tried to reclaim his suits, the dry cleaner's owners, Chung Jin-Nam and his wife, Chung Soo, found a pair of trousers that they said matched the suit jacket. Their lawyer, Christopher Manning, said that the trousers' measurements were precisely what Pearson had asked for and that its tag number matched Pearson's receipt.
When the trial began earlier in June, Pearson broke down in tears when he explained to the judge his frustration over losing his trousers. But he may soon face more serious reasons to cry.
Pearson was appointed to fill the final two years of a 10-year term as administrative law judge. In the wake of the publicity generated by his lawsuit, city officials are debating whether to follow through with giving him his own term.
The dry cleaner's owners expressed satisfaction with the verdict and no hard feelings toward Pearson. "We're very pleased," Soo Chung said through an interpreter. "The past two years have been difficult."
Pearson could not be reached for comment.-