Below The Beltway

Apparently, filing a frivolous lawsuit does not disqualify you from being a judge in the District of Columbia:

Around the D.C. government and around the world, Roy Pearson — the man who sued his neighborhood dry cleaner for $65 million in a dispute over a missing pair of pants — has become a laughingstock, a symbol of a legal system gone wild, another blot on the image of the District.

So last week, when the order came from managers of the city’s Web site to remove Pearson’s biography from the page about his job as an administrative law judge, a cheer went up among the techies in the office. Word spread like wildfire: Finally, the city had acted to salvage its reputation.

(…)

There is good reason to believe that Pearson might win a new term. Before the pants suit became a worldwide story, the city’s chief administrative law judge, Tyrone Butler, recommended approval of Pearson’s application based on his job performance, said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson and three other sources with direct knowledge of the recommendation. Butler did not respond to a request for comment.

“Everyone agrees that to file a lawsuit asking for $65 million for a pair of pants is absolutely outrageous,” the D.C. official said. “But we are trying to keep that out of the discussion about reappointment. I don’t think it’s appropriate not to reappoint someone just because they file a lawsuit. You can’t retaliate against someone for exercising their constitutional, First Amendment right to file a lawsuit to vindicate their rights.”

Even when that lawsuit is a complete and total fraud ?

What’s interesting is that this apparently isn’t the first time that Pearson has abused the legal system:

This isn’t the first time Pearson has represented himself aggressively. A 2005 Virginia Court of Appeals decision notes that the judge handling Pearson’s divorce found him “responsible for excessive driving up of everything that went on here, including threatening both the wife and her lawyer with disbarment.”

That opinion can be found here.

Meanwhile, as the Post’s Marc Fisher reports, Pearson remains unfazed by all this:

Pearson declined to be interviewed for my columns on the suit suit. But in e-mails responding to my last column, he said that his $65 million claim “has little to do with lost suit pants.” Rather, he wrote, his case focuses on the signs posted at the cleaners: “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service,” promises that he says were misleading.

“I hope you will attend the trial and see how little of the damages sought and awarded there have anything to do with suit pants,” Pearson wrote.

And how much of it has to do with a legal system that’s gone out of control.

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The Case Of the $ 65 Million Pants