Have you ever heard about loony lawsuit? A man sues dry cleaner for losing his pants about two years ago. Roy L. Pearson took a pair of pants to Custom Cleaners to have them altered for the sum of $10.50. Two days later, the pants turned up missing. Pearson told the Chungs, the family who owns the cleaners, to cough up a thousand bucks for a new suit. A week later, Chungs said the pants had showed up, and they refused to pay. But Pearson said the pants weren’t his and decided to sue.

The Chungs countered with a $12,000 settlement offer – that would have been 12 brand new sets of pinstripes for the judge. But out of principle Pearson went ahead with his suit earlier this year. Signs hanging in the store read “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same-Day Service,” neither of which he had realized, and that, he insisted, constituted fraud. How Pearson arrived at his princely sum? By following D.C.’s consumer-protection laws, which impose fines of $1,500 per violation, per day. Pearson figured he’d been cheated 20 different ways, 12 of them over the course of 1,200 days, the length of time he estimated the offending signs were up. He then multiplied that amount by three, the number of Chungs who own the shop. His laundry list of greed included $1,500,000 for emotional damaged and $542,500 to cover the cost of the lawyer, who happens to be a guy named Judge Roy L. Pearson. For good measure, he tacked on $45,000, the cost of renting a car for the next ten years to drive to and from some other dry cleaner. However, this case was dismissed by the judge.

Adapted from Andy Simmons