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| 11/26 |
| 2007/6/12-15 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:46923 Activity:nil |
6/12 Courtroom of the absurd (this seriously had me LOL):
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/?hpid=topnews
\_ I like the old lady Godwinning.
\_ Between this and Bork's "You made me fall down" lawsuit, it's quite
the week for legal laughs.
\_ If anything, today's is even better.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher |
| 11/26 |
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| blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/?hpid=topnews RSS Feed Posted at 4:30 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners: Day 1 Wrap-Up Well, Roy Pearson has mercifully wrapped up, and Day One of the trial is over. Tomorrow will begin with his cross-examination, which should prove interesting. After close to eight hours of courtroom antics, however, two things are clear: Pearson is a fastidious litigator, and Judith Bartnoff is a patient judge. But the temperaments of plaintiff and judge are not at issue here. And from where I was sitting, it seemed pretty clear that no judge in his or her right mind -- with the possible exception of Pearson, who is a former administrative law judge -- could find that Pearson deserves $54 million for them. One colorful courtroom personality I forgot to mention earlier was a flack for the the American Tort Reform Association, who showed up in a seersucker suit with a green lapel button reading: "$65 Million "Pantsuit' Perverts DC's Consumer Protection Law." So he was off by a few million (Pearson initially sued for $65 million but later reduced his claim to $54 million). Digg This Posted at 3:35 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners: The Plaintiff Testifies (Continued) After a five-minute break to dry his eyes, Roy Pearson came back to the courtroom. A hush came over the crowd, though it was probably due more to fatigue than to suspense. When the trial resumed, Pearson continued to describe how this incident occurred. Then, clearly having difficulty speaking, he asked if he could submit this part in writing. Defense counsel objected, and the judge assured Pearson he was doing fine. Pulling himself together, Pearson continued with his exhaustive description of how he -- or, in his telling, Custom Cleaners -- lost his pants. He testified that he is not a person given to threats, and so gave a lot of thought to this lawsuit. He did not want to litigate, he said, but he felt that DC consumer protection laws gave him no choice. At 3:55 pm, he mercifully wrapped up the narrative part of his testimony. I'll save readers the yawns and post the next time something significant happens. Pearson took the stand this afternoon in his trial against Custom Cleaners, and it wasn't exactly spellbinding. Pearson went into seemingly every minute detail of life: his history of community service, his weight gain as a middle-aged man, his financial woes and his painful divorce. Even the opposing defense counsel was rubbing his eyes and suppressing yawns. But the judge let Pearson tell his story, taking occasional notes, always with a somewhat bemused expression on her face. I could almost see the thought bubble over her head: Take as much time as you need to orchestrate your circus. Would it be heartless to ask whether he had been bored to tears? Digg This Posted at 2:43 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners, Witnesses 7 & 8 The seventh and eighth witnesses gave fairly quick testimony. First was Samuel Adinew, a salesman at Nordstrom who confirmed that he sold the kind of Hickey Freeman suits that brought rise to this lawsuit in the first place. Befitting his position, Adinew was well appointed, wearing a dapper gray striped suit, white striped shirt with double button cuff and pink/purple tie. Under cross examination, he testified that the most expensive pair of pants he sold cost $395. Next was Lewis Burnett, who works with Pearson as a DC administrative court judge. Pearson was his mentor, he said, and they had similar interests. But he and Pearson had not been able to spend much time together on weekends lately, he said, because Pearson was too busy working on the case. We'll see what kind of questions defense counsel asks Burnett during cross. Digg This Posted at 2:29 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners, Witness 6 Blogging Live From This Year's Most Frivolous Lawsuit After a one-hour lunch break, the trial resumed at approximately 2:15. For his sixth witness, Pearson called his son, a caterer. He testified that when he first started in the food-service industry, he didn't have enough money to buy a suit, so he often "shopped" in his father's closet, borrowing suits as necessary. He also testified that he was surprised when he heard his father was suing Custom Cleaners. "I know you don't like litigation," he told his father from the stand. Digg This Posted at 2:08 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners, Witness 4 Pearson's fourth witness, Grace Hewell, was the most entertaining thus far. Instead of taking the witness chair, the 89-year-old wheelchair-bound veteran of World War II was placed next to Pearson. When asked if she would tell the truth during her oath, she asked the court officer to please speak up, explaining she doesn't hear well in her left ear. She then briefly recounted how and when she lost her hearing. Pearson began his examination by asking her to give her background; she responded that it may be too long to fully enumerate. During her long career, she said, Hewell had worked on a congressional committee for education and labor during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- a point which she brought up repeatedly and in varying depth over the course of her testimony. Judge Bartnoff commended her on her service but explained that she had been called to testify about Custom Cleaners, not her work in Congress. Hewell then explained, in often amusing terms, the nature of her beef with Custom Cleaners. She testified that they had "ruined" a pair of her suit pants, and when she complained to Mr Chung, he ignored her. As a veteran who had served in the WAC in Germany, she said, she thought she could handle him -- but remembering what the Nazis did during the Holocaust, she still felt intimidated. So she ran to a nearby car and told the driver she was a senior citizen and she was being attacked. Judge Bartnoff could be seen looking down at her desk and biting her lips. Hewell then said she readied her cane in preparation for conflict with Chung, but that it never materialized. When defense counsel Manning questioned her about this, she explained that she was very upset about the suit pants and kept thinking about what "Hitler did to thousands of Jews." Through further questioning about her hearing loss, however, Manning tried to establish that Chung didn't ignore her -- she simply hadn't heard his response. With the courtroom visibly amused, Hewell was dismissed. Digg This Posted at 1:44 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners, Witness 3 Blogging Live From This Year's Most Frivolous Lawsuit For his third witness, Pearson called Rhonda Johnston, an employee of the Postal Service whose office was just a few storefronts from Custom Cleaners. She is the youngest witness thus far, with cornrows and a loud voice. During a long and colorful examination of her background, defense counsel objected that it was irrelevant. Discussion then moved on to her complaint, during which Ms Johnston spoke in a vivid "Asian accent" and said she lost a $40 sweater. Custom Cleaners, Johnston said, claimed not to have damaged the sweater because it claimed never to have cleaned it. "'You not bring here,"' the Chungs told her, Johnston testified. Digg This Posted at 12:38 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Pearson v Custom Cleaners, Witness 2 Blogging Live From This Year's Most Frivolous Lawsuit Pearson's second witness, Lisa Hutchins, MD, seems reluctant and is soft spoken. She stopped patronizing Custom Cleaners, she said, when one of her dresses was damaged. Ms Chung claimed it had been damaged beforehand, Hutchins said, and pretended not to understand her. She testified that she told the Chungs they might lose a customer and they appeared not to care. Under cross-examination, Hutchins testified that her interpretation of "satisfaction guaranteed" would be reimbursement for the dress: "Yes, that would satisfy me." She went on to say, however, that "I don't believe in bait-and-switch practices, which I feel happened here." Custom Cleaners, she said, "should be counted on to uphold the law." Talk About Being Taken to the Cleaners (AP) After a break, Pearson called his first witness, Nora D Faison. The rather stale testimony was punctuated by a moment of laughter when Pear... |
| blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher -> blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/ Posted at 05:48 PM ET, 06/13/2007 Pants Update: Trial Over, Verdict Next Week The pants trial is over, and Judge Judith Bartnoff isn't ruling until next week--with a guy like Roy Pearson doing the suing, you don't want to rule verbally, but rather want to make certain that every I is dotted. But Bartnoff made her sense of the case quite clear in her final words from the bench tonight: "It was a long two days," she said. Speaking of the DC consumer protection law that Pearson is relying on to argue that he deserves $54 million because Custom Cleaners allegedly lost a pair of his pants, Bartnoff said: "This is a very important statue to protect consumers. It's also very important that statutes like this are not misused." Draw your own conclusions, but if I were Roy Pearson, I'd stop shopping for new pants and start searching instead for a new tailor. Digg This Posted at 01:36 PM ET, 06/13/2007 Pants Trial Day Two: We See The Pants At noon precisely on Day Two of the $54 million pants case, we saw The Pants. The dramatic moment in Courtroom 415 at DC Superior Court revealed that yes, the pants look like they are part of a suit, and yes, the dry cleaners attached to these pants a tag with the same numbers that appeared on the receipt Pearson got for his suit. But Pearson still denies these are his pants, and still demands $54 million, though he has not yet wept today. Pearson finally completed his lengthy testimony this morning and Manning proceeded to conduct a short but withering cross-examination in which Pearson, himself an administrative law judge for the DC government, revealed his unusual beliefs about the relationship between merchants and customers: Pearson told the defense lawyer that if the tables were turned and he were in the place of the Chung family, the owners of the Northeast Washington cleaners who purportedly lost Pearson's pants, he would have immediately written a check for $1,150--the replacement value of the Hickey Freeman suit to which the pants belonged--to provide the satisfaction that the store's "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign promised. It took more than 10 minutes and numerous attempts by both Manning and Judge Judith Bartnoff to get Pearson to answer a question about whether anyone has the right to walk into any cleaners and claim $1,150 simply by saying that their suit had been lost. Finally, Pearson said that the law requires that "The merchant would have an obligation to honor their demand." The courtroom, in which it's hard to discern any support for Pearson except from his mother and her friend, broke up in laughter. Manning pushed ahead: Does Pearson believe that people should interpret signs "in a reasonable way?" And just to drive home just how odd Pearson's view of the world might be, Manning asked whether a reasonable person would interpret a "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign to mean that the merchant will do his best and if problems arise, will try to fix the situation, and if he can't, will compensate the customer, Pearson replied: "No." This ended Pearson's case and defense lawyer Manning used the break in the action to ask Judge Bartnoff to toss out the whole case because it fails as a matter of law. After lengthy discussion, Bartnoff ruled that "It's a close call," but she would let the case proceed, but for one small part that she threw out. Pearson had argued that the cleaners' sign saying "Same Day Service" was misleading and fraudulent, but Bartnoff said he produced no evidence of that and indeed he had never asked for same day service on any of his garments. "All Same Day Service says is that same day service is an available service," the judge ruled, freeing DC cleaners of any chance that they might suddenly be required to wash and repair every single garment in town in a single day. Bartnoff has handled Pearson with a disarming and delightful mix of humor and stern direction. Sometimes incredulous, sometimes gently joshing, she has repeatedly lured Pearson out of his tendency to go off on long, incomprehensible recitations about the minutia of the District's consumer protection law. But Bartnoff has been careful to let Pearson state his odd notions of law with few limitations. This is known as giving someone all the rope they need to hang themselves. "Your position," Bartnoff said to Pearson this morning, "is that 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' means they have to satisfy whatever you demand, with no limitations, absolutely unconditionally?" Digg This Posted at 10:56 PM ET, 06/12/2007 Virginia Voters: Low Turnout, High Dudgeon Not a whole lot of Virginians came out to the polls Tuesday, but those who did made some things pretty clear: Democrats remain more than a bit miffed about George Allen and the whole macaca business, Republicans would like to remind their party's leaders that theirs is supposed to be the party of low taxes and skepticism about state spending, and the electorate is poised to make some serious changes this fall. The smattering of primary elections held in this year when more voters are likely looking ahead to the '08 presidential sweepstakes than are concentrated on state politics cannot offer any absolutely firm conclusions, but the results are dramatic enough to lead both parties to do some serious thinking. One of the most impressive and delicious results was the ouster of Democratic state Sen. This was a grudge match driven in good part by McEachin and his fellow Dems' desire to punish Lambert for having been the most prominent Democrat and the most prominent black politician in the state to have endorsed George Allen last fall in his US Senate reelection bid. traitorous act made Lambert Enemy #1 to many Dems, and the voters apparently concurred. Lambert defended his decision as a tribute to Allen's support for historically black colleges--certainly a worthy cause, but to many Democrats, not nearly sufficient to make up for Allen's racial and other insensitivities. With Virginia's statewide races over the next couple of years so much up in the air, there may well be a place on a gubernatorial or senatorial ballot for Allen, who, after all, did lose to Jim Webb by only 9,000 votes. But Lambert was not the only sitting state senator to lose his seat in this June primary. Two moderate Republican incumbents lost to conservative challengers who accused the sitting senators of having morphed into big spenders just like the party's now widely disliked standard-bearer, the president of these United States. Martin Williams of Newport News and Brandon Bell of Roanoke are gone goodbye, and while hard core Republicans will celebrate this as a reassertion of the party's pre-Mark Warner-Tim Kaine era commitment to chopping spending and eschewing taxes, plenty of Democrats will also be cheered by these results. That's because Kaine and the Dems had already planned to make this fall's campaign--the entire Virginia legislature is up for election in November--about how the Republicans are supposedly so far to the right that the state needs to push the Senate over to the D side to provide safety and balance. These primary results will only strengthen the Dems' hand--not necessarily in those firmly Republican districts, but elsewhere around the state where the party split is closer. In northern Virginia, three Republicans in deeply divided districts may find themselves in even greater trouble after these primaries. Ken Cuccinelli, Jeannemarie Devolites Davis and Jay O'Brien were all struggling to survive even before this vote. Now, their Democratic challengers will be able to make a stronger case that a Democratic takeover of the Senate is a real possibility. Locally, perhaps the most fascinating race was that for Fairfax supervisor in the Providence district, the traditional kingmaker part of the county that produced county board chairman Gerry Connolly. political novice Charlie Hall (a former reporter and editor here at the Washington Post), who campaigned against the county's newfound zeal for "smart growth" development to increase density around Metro stations. frustrations of people in Vienna and other areas where residents resent the county government's approval of large new residentia... |