I turned on my computer this morning, and on the home page of Yahoo found an article about the most outrageous lawsuit of all time. A judge in Washington DC, Roy Pearson, is suing a dry cleaning business because they lost a pair of pants from a suit he claims cost him $1,000. Here's the kicker. He's suing the owners of the small business, the Chungs, for $65 million. Apparently, he thinks the Chungs should pay for him to take his business to another store for the next ten years, and visiting that store will require him to rent a car and incur tremendous expenses. Mr. Pearson is citing two signs that hung in the Chungs' dry cleaning store as the basis for his lawsuit. One sign read, "Satisfaction guaranteed," while the other said, "Same day service."
Apparently, Mr. Pearson would not accept three settlement offers from the Chungs (as high as $12,000), so the case is going to trial. If that's not enough to make the Chungs disheartened with the US legal system, it turns out they found the missing pants one week after Mr. Pearson was scheduled to originally pick them up. Of course, Mr. Pearson denies the pants are his.
What should we learn from this as marketers? Disclaimers are our friends, and we should use them in advertising and copywriting religiously. The Chungs have since taken down the two suspect signs from their store, but a small disclaimer may have saved them a lot of time, money and frustration.
I don't think a disclaimer is going to help them at all. If someone wants to sue they are going to sue.
"Satisfaction guaranteed" isn't going to help someone who obviously cannot be satisfied ($12,000 wouldn't do it).
Hopefully this guy that is suing for $65 million gets laughed at and any reimbursement is just.
Posted by: JC | May 3, 2007 4:23 PM | Permalink to Comment