Monday, June 25, 2007

Judge's missing pants not worth $54M

Sometimes common sense does prevail in the courts (which prompts me to write about it): the owner of Washington D.C.-based Custom Clearners will not have to pay $54 million to the crybaby who got his knickers in a bunch when the dry cleaner lost his favorite pair of pants.

Judge Judith Bartoff ruled that Custom Cleaners did not violate its "Satisfaction Guaranteed" policy and wrote: "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. . .

We can now say that $54 mil to replace a pair of fancy-pants is indeed most unreasonable. Plaintiff Roy L. Pearson (also a judge) should have taken the $200 offered, got himself some new fancy-pants, and taken them to another place for alterations. Then, he could have simply used the power of word-of-mouth to express his true feelings about Custom.

Rather, he got greedy trying to make a point.

Pearson was ordered to pay Custom's court costs.

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