Can you believe this?

A judge in Washington, DC is suing a small dry cleaning company, claiming they lost a pair of his trousers.

How much is he asking for?

$67 million:

A Washington, D.C., dry cleaners says it’s their business a longtime customer is taking to the cleaners.

A $10 dry cleaning bill for a pair of trousers has ballooned into a $67 million civil lawsuit.

Plaintiff Roy Pearson, a judge in Washington, D.C., says in court papers that he’s been through the ringer over a lost pair of prized pants he wanted to wear on his first day on the bench.

He says in court papers that he has endured “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort.”

He says he was unable to wear that favorite suit on his first day of work.

He’s suing for 10 years of weekend car rentals so he can transport his dry cleaning to another store.

The lawsuit is based in large part on Pearson’s seemingly pained admission that he was taken in by the oldest and most insidious marketing tool in the dry cleaning industry arsenal.

“Satisfaction Guaranteed.”

[...]

Defending themselves against the suit — for two years running — are Korean immigrants Jin and Soo Chung and their son, who own Custom Cleaners and two other dry cleaning shops in the Fort Lincoln section of Washington, D.C.

The ABC News Law & Justice Unit has calculated that for $67 million Pearson could buy 84,115 new pairs of pants at the $800 value he placed on the missing trousers in court documents. If you stacked those pants up, they would be taller than eight Mount Everests. If you laid them side by side, they would stretch for 48 miles.

[...]

According to court papers, here’s how Pearson calculates the damages and legal fees:

He believes he is entitled to $1,500 for each violation, each day during which the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign and another sign promising “Same Day Service” was up in the store — more than 1,200 days.

And he’s multiplying each violation by three because he’s suing Jin and Soo Chung and their son.

He also wants $500,000 in emotional damages and $542, 500 in legal fees, even though he is representing himself in court.

He wants $15,000 for 10 years’ worth of weekend car rentals as well.

After enlisting neighbors and fellow customers, he sought to expand the case into a class action suit, but was denied, angrily, by District of Columbia Civil Judge Neal Kravitz.

“The Court has significant concerns that the plaintiff is acting in bad faith and with an intent to delay the proceedings,” the judge wrote in court papers. “Indeed, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion, given the plaintiff’s lengthy delay in seeking to expand the scope of the case, the breathtaking magnitude of the expansion he seeks, his failure to present any evidence in support of the thousands of claims he says he wishes to add, and his misrepresentation concerning the scope of his first amended complaint.”

Can you believe this jerk?

Read the rest here.