A United States court on Monday ruled against a man seeking $54-million from the Korean immigrant owners of a dry cleaners who, he said, lost his pants despite a promise of “satisfaction guaranteed”.
Roy Pearson alleged that Custom Cleaners, run by Jin and Soo Chung and their son, lost his blue- and red-striped gray trousers and misled him with a sign promising satisfaction.
But a judge ruled against him on all counts, denied him the $54-million he sought and ordered him to pay the Chungs’ legal fees. Pearson “takes nothing from the defendants”, Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled.
She said the Chungs should be held to a “reasonable interpretation” of their guarantee, one “espoused by every witness at trial who was asked about the sign, with the exception of the plaintiff”, that they should pay for a lost item.
But Pearson, an administrative judge in Washington, had calculated the penalty at $54-million under Washington consumer-protection laws, at $1 500 for every day the cleaners left a “guarantee” sign up in their shop, US media reported.
He also sought emotional damages and legal fees, though he was representing himself.
He insisted they lost his trousers and tried to return a different pair; they denied those allegations.
“A resonable consumer would not interpret ‘satisfaction guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands,” Bartnoff wrote.
The Chungs, she a former homemaker and he a former coal-factory worker, moved to the US in May 1992, and have owned a total of three cleaning shops. — AFP