Giving new meaning to 'taken to the cleaners'

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A city administrative law judge is too big for his pants, the value of which he places at $65 million in an absurd lawsuit against the owners of Custom Cleaners on Bladensburg Road in Northeast.

The infamous pants became a point of contention two years ago after the judge took them to the cleaner to have them altered. These pants initially were deemed missing by the cleaner before being found a few days later.

By then, Roy Pearson wanted compensation for the pants. The owners of the cleaner just wanted to return the pants and be done with the matter.

That, of course, was not good enough for a judge who has the time and expertise to use the city's consumer-protection law against a small business. Judge Pearson filed a lawsuit against the cleaner, and no attempts to compromise have satisfied him in the past two years.

An attorney for the Chung family -- a father, mother and son -- says they have offered Judge Pearson settlements of $3,000, $4,600 and $12,000, which is an incredible sum of money for one lousy pair of pants. But no matter. To the judge, it no longer was about the pants.

It was about his "mental suffering." It was about the cost of leasing a car to drive to another cleaner. It also was about the cost of litigating the pants.

So the sorry case of the "missing pants" will be heard June 11.

The pants now hang in the office of Chris Manning, the attorney who represents the Chungs.

Not surprisingly, the pants have received considerable airtime in the Washington region. They have come to be a symbol of a city's frivolous bent. We live in serious times, as the news cycle reminds us each day. We live among the crazies plotting to kill our soldiers on Fort Dix, N.J., in celebration of Allah.

Yet here we have a judge who lacks the perspective, humanity and decency to drop the travesty of the pants. Instead, he is squeezing the Chungs, who have paid a princely sum in lawyers fees and learned a disappointing lesson about the American system.