Lawsuit | Jokestarter

As summer starts to sink her hot and humid teeth in, the weather starts to take effect on the human mind, causing otherwise normal, everyday folks to do things like use food product to hide holes in prison walls, see religious images inside juicy red fruit, pull over vehicles shaped like giant wieners, and ask cops for a “time out” when being chased:

WASHINGTON, DC – Whew…there still is some justice left in America folks:

A judge ruled Monday in favor of a dry cleaner that was sued for $54 million over a missing pair of pants.

In other words, the stooge bastard idiot who sued a dry cleaners for $54 million dolla holla LOST. Ha.

The owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city’s consumer protection law by failing to live up to Roy L. Pearson’s expectations of the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store window, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled.

“A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands” or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.

Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung. Pants

Pearson, an administrative law judge, originally sought $67 million from the Chungs, claiming they lost a pair of trousers from a blue and maroon suit, then tried to give him a pair a pair of charcoal gray pants that he said were not his. He arrived at the amount by adding up years of alleged law violations and almost $2 million in common law fraud claims.

Bartnoff wrote, however, that Pearson failed to prove that the pants the dry cleaner tried to return were not the pants he had taken in for alterations.

Pearson later dropped demands for damages related to the pants and focused his claims on signs in the shop, which have since been removed.

The court costs amount to just over $1,000 for photocopying, filing and similar expenses, according to the Chungs’ attorney. A motion to recover the Chungs’ tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees will be considered later.

Chris Manning, the Chungs’ attorney, praised the ruling, which followed a two-day trial earlier this month.

“Judge Bartnoff has spoken loudly in suggesting that, while consumers should be protected, abusive lawsuits like this will not be tolerated,” Manning said in a statement. “Judge Bartnoff has chosen common sense and reasonableness over irrationality and unbridled venom.”

Pearson did not immediately respond to a call and an e-mail seeking comment.

JOKESTARTERS:

Anyone other than me think that this “judge” may have trouble holding onto his job? Does he still even have a job? Maybe he can be the comedic antidote judge on a new TV show about ridiculous lawsuits called “I’ll sue your pants off!”

SOURCE:

Seattle P-I

VIDEO:

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Dry Cleaner Wins in $54-million Pants Lawsuit

Associated Press – (APTN)

Jun. 25, 2007. 11:26 AM EST

A U.S. judge on Monday ruled in favor of a South Korean dry cleaner who was sued for $54 million over a missing pair of pants in a case that garnered international attention.(June 25)

Ah yeah…another wonderfully weird and wacky week o’news to lovingly look back on, with fond memories of sippy cups full’booze, snakes in a garden gnome, alleged courthouse ghosts (or bugs), breaking, entering and stealing only a salad, no touchy-feely in a DC-area school, death by sex on top of a building and using a human skull to make an ashtray…

Popeye and Olive Oyl forget their diaper bag and cause a major evacuation.

Live video from the space shuttle beams down to a baby monitor in Illinois.

And the DC judge who’s suing a dry cleaners for $54 mil stops court proceedings by crying.

Whadda weird n’ wacky week…

WASHINGTON, DC – Monica Emmerson is a former law enforcement officer who was traveling through Reagan National Airport on June 11th with her 19-month old toddler when she was stopped and hassled by the TSA for water in her son’s sippy cup.

The sippy cup was seized by TSA. Monica wanted the cup back because the sippy cup was the only way her son would drink — and it was a long flight between Washington, DC and Reno, Nevada where she was going for a family reunion. If you’ve ever traveled with a toddler you understand about sippy cups.

So she was willing to spill the water out. Drink the water. Anything — all that she wanted was to be able to have a cup that her 19-month-old toddler could drink from.

Here’s what happened in Monica’s words:

“I demanded to speak to a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] supervisor who asked me if the water in the sippy cup was ‘nursery water or other bottled water.’ I explained that the sippy cup water was filtered tap water. The sippy cup was seized as my son was pointing and crying for his cup. I asked if I could drink the water to get the cup back, and was advised that I would have to leave security and come back through with an empty cup in order to retain the cup. As I was escorted out of security by TSA and a police officer, I unscrewed the cup to drink the water, which accidentally spilled because I was so upset with the situation.

“At this point, I was detained against my will by the police officer and threatened to be arrested for endangering other passengers with the spilled 3 to 4 ounces of water. I was ordered to clean the water, so I got on my hands and knees while my son sat in his stroller with no shoes on since they were also screened and I had no time to put them back on his feet. I asked to call back my fiancé, who I could still see from afar, waiting for us to clear security, to watch my son while I was being detained, and the officer threatened to arrest me if I moved. So I yelled past security to get the attention of my fiancé.

“I was ordered to apologize for the spilled water, and again threatened arrest. I was threatened several times with arrest while detained, and while three other police officers were called to the scene of the mother with the 19 month old. A total of four police officers and three TSA officers reported to the scene where I was being held against my will. I was also told that I should not disrespect the officer and could be arrested for this too. I apologized to the officer and she continued to detain me despite me telling her that I would miss my flight. The officer advised me that I should have thought about this before I ‘intentionally spilled the water!’” Barney Fife, TSA

Monica said that the incident ended this way: “I missed my flight, needless to say after being detained for over 40 minutes. After the officer was done humiliating me, I was advised that I could go through the security check point in an attempt to catch my flight. The officer insisted that my son and I be rescreened despite us both being detained and under her control the entire time.”

During the weeks and months after 9/11 some passengers who were caught with unidentified fluids while going through airport security were told to drink the liquid (including breast milk) to prove that it wasn’t an explosive. In one incident, a fourteen year old boy was ordered to drink water that he was carrying, and it turned out that this was unclean pond water he was carrying for a science project. Monica was more than happy to drink her child’s tap water –all three or four ounces of it– and tried, in fact. But it was the trying and spilling that seems to have escalated this into a situation that required the presence of four TSA officers and three police officers.

TSA found no other security problems with Monica Emmerson. Not even a nail clipper. Just the water and the sippy cup.

TSA’s rules allow passengers to take up to three ounces of liquid on board; they also allow parents to take milk or baby formula on board in larger quantities than that, if declared to TSA. But the question that she was asked by TSA –was this “nursery water” in the sippy cup?– was an unanswerable one, since there’s no such thing as nursery water in the TSA regulations, and it’s not generic term.

Monica Emmerson was detained for 45 minutes. She wasn’t questioned about possible ties to terrorists. Her carry-on items weren’t rigorously searched — or even searched again. Neither the police nor TSA took any action that indicated that they through she might be a security risk. She was just detained, harassed and threatened with arrest.

All because of a sippy cup with water in it.

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