Dans Papers - May 18, 2007 - Merchant Stories

Sometimes, it's just a good thing to be able to report on the little stories in the news that happen elsewhere. These two stories happened just two days apart. And though they happened five hundred miles away from each other, they seem to have something to do with one another, although I can't quite figure out what.

The first story came in over the wires here in Bridgehampton from Washington, DC last Tuesday. A man took a pair of pants to a Chinese Laundry. When they didn't turn up cleaned the next day, he filed a suit for $65 million. This happened two years ago and it's quite a story what's happened since. The pants were brought to the dry cleaners on May 17, 2005, by Roy Pearson. They were part of a suit. The owners of the dry cleaning place, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Chung, said that the suit was too late to be cleaned that day, but promised it would be cleaned and ready for pickup the next day. Custom Cleaners has signs on the wall reading "Same Day Service" and "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

The next day, Pearson came back to find that though the jacket was ready, the pants were not. In fact, the Chungs couldn't find them. The Chungs assured Pearson that they would turn up. But that was not good enough. Pearson had just recently been appointed a judge in one of the districts of Washington D. C. and he was not going to put up with this. The Chungs said, please be patient, we will find them in the next day or two.

Five days later, the pants did turn up. But Pearson was very angry and said he did not want them now. It was too late. He expected that his local community dry cleaner would have a pair of pants dry cleaned as they advertised - he pointed to the signs. He was then shown the pants but said they were not his. His pants, he said, had red and blue piping on them and these pants had only red piping. He said he was not satisfied and demanded that the Chungs pay him $1,000, as his satisfaction was guaranteed and that was the cost of the pants. The Chungs said these were the pants, and if he would please bring in the jacket, he would see that they matched. Pearson stomped out, and he did not do so. The Chungs decided to wait until he calmed down.

Now, two years later, Pearson, representing himself, has filed a lawsuit for $65 million. He is suing for the $1,000 for the cost of the pair of pants, and, in addition, $15,000, the cost of a rental car for one day every week for ten years, which is the term of his judgeship. He says he needs to rent a car now, because his local dry cleaner does not live up to the claims they make on the signs in the store and he now has to drive to another part of town to use another dry cleaner.

The bulk of the $65 million in the lawsuit, however, comes from a claim Pearson is making about other problems he has had at this dry cleaners. During the last four years, he has remembered twelve different incidents that he says left him unsatisfied. According to Washington D. C. consumer protection law, which he carefully read, fines accrue at the rate of $1,500 a day from the time of any fraudulent incident, which is what Pearson claims is going on here, since the sign reads "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and he is not satisfied. Figuring the dates of each of these frauds, he has multiplied each of them by the number of days until he filed the claim and the total is $64,450,000. With the rest of the claims, it adds up to $65 million.

And he is still not done. In another part of his lawsuit, he declares himself to be the attorney of record for any other customers of this dry cleaner who have not been satisfied and invites anyone to contact him for further amounts to be claimed. Whatever these amounts are will be added at a future date.

The Chungs, who are immigrants, have been staggered by this lawsuit. In the past few days, they offered to settle for $3,000, then $4,500, then $12,000 and when all these offers were turned down, they hired an attorney named Chris Manning to defend them.

Manning has gone public with this story. He says this guy is such a nutcase that the Chungs and their grown son, Soo, are thinking of moving back to the Old Country. He also has, in his office for safekeeping and for anyone who might like to look at them, the pair of pants in question, which, he says, has stapled to it the very same claim number that was on the receipt presented when Judge Pearson picked up the jacket.

"The pants also match Pearson's inseam measurement. We checked."

At the present time, local citizens have marched in front of the Custom Cleaners waving signs expressing support for the Chungs. The American Tort Association, which polices abusive lawsuits against small businesses, has asked that Judge Pearson's appointment be reconsidered and the National Laborers, Relations Board's chief administrative judge, Melvin Wells, has demanded that Mr. Pearson be disbarred.

The other news story involving a small matter took place in the Bronx on Wednesday. On that day, Wayne Jones, who is a lieutenant in the local fire department, went to the Great Wall Drive Through and ordered three pieces of fried chicken. Arriving at the window where you pay (before you get to the next window to pick up the food), he tried to pay the $5.30 bill with a five-dollar bill, two dimes and ten pennies.

The woman at the window, a young woman of Chinese ancestry, as it turns out, declined to take the ten pennies. When Jones pointed out it was certified American currency just like the bill and the dimes, he says he was told that she was willing to take a few pennies, maybe up to four, but that this was a busy place and she just didn't have time to count ten pennies.

Jones left with his money back, but without his chicken.

That night, he sent emails out to local officials explaining what happened and asking that they show up in front of the Great Wall for a protest and march the next day, which was this past Wednesday.

At the event, with numerous local officials in attendance, Ruben Diaz, Sr., a state senator, got up alongside Jones and said he was not there to protest this for himself, but for all the poor people of this district for whom a penny might mean a lot and who might show up to pay a bill with all pennies, as that would be what they had collected.

"For them to be refused food and have to go hungry in this district because some food place won't accept pennies is a sin. We are in America. We are all Americans. And pennies are American currency."

Reporters flocked around Jones, the senator and the Chinese girl, who identified herself as having dealt with Jones at the drive through. She said she had NOT refused all his pennies and that she accepted pennies and then she burst into tears.

Another woman there spoke to the media and said angrily that she had had pennies refused at the Great Wall and she knew others who did, too.

As I said, I can't quite figure out how these two stories are related. Maybe you can. What I do know is that it reminds me of a joke.

A man who works at an insurance company in Manhattan and lives in Merrick, Long Island, is called into his boss' office and told there is good news. He is being promoted to Vice President and is being assigned the job of taking over one of the branch offices.

"It's in Cleveland," the boss says. "I know you've been here for fifteen years and you have roots in Merrick. So you might want to go home and talk to your wife and kids about this. If you accept this promotion, you'll have to move to Cleveland."

The man goes home and that night presents the case to his family, all of whom say that they are behind him and he should accept the promotion.

A week later, the man is up in the attic of his house packing up boxes for the move and he comes upon a box of items he's saved from when he was a soldier during the Vietnam era. Amidst the paperwork and medals, he finds a ticket for a pair of shoes that he had left off in a shoe repair store in Cleveland. And he remembers this. He had been in basic training in Cleveland and got shipped out the day after he left off the shoes. He never did return to pick them up. He's moving to Cleveland. He puts the ticket into his wallet.

Ten days later, he is walking down a busy street in Cleveland headed for a real estate broker's office downtown. A salesman there is going to show him a house. There are big skyscrapers all around.

At one street corner, he notes that the street he is on is the street is the same as the one printed on his shoe repair ticket. He stops, takes the ticket out and looks at it. 2744 Lake Street. He is at 2688. Of course the shoe repair place will not be there. But what could it hurt to look?

He walks another block and he can hardly believe his eyes. There, wedged between two glass skyscrapers is this little wooden shack with a stove pipe on the roof and the number 2744 above the front door. He goes inside, and the door closes behind him, making a ding-a-ling sound. And soon thereafter, a little man comes out from behind a curtain on the other side of the counter.

"You're not going to believe this," he says. "But 35 years ago, I dropped a pair of shoes off to be repaired and never picked them up. I just can't believe this place is still here. Amazing."

"Do you have a ticket?"

He fishes around in his wallet and hands the ticket to the little man, who looks down at it and then back up.

"Just a minute," he says. And he disappears in the back behind the curtain. Five minutes later, he is back.