American Tort Reform Association : Judge's Appeal Evidences 'Unappealing' Character

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American Tort Reform Association

Since 1986, American Tort Reform Association is the only national organization exclusively dedicated to reforming the civil justice system. ATRA was co-founded in 1986 by the American Medical Association and the American Council of Engineering Companies. Since that time, ATRA has been working to bring greater fairness, predictability and efficiency to America's civil justice system. ATRA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with affiliated coalitions in more than 40 states. ATRA's membership is diverse and includes nonprofits, small and large companies, as well as state and national trade, business, and professional associations.

About Sherman Joyce

SHERMAN JOYCE is President of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), a national coalition of more than 300 non-profit organizations, professional societies, trade associations and corporations working through in-state coalitions to bring fairness and efficiency to the civil justice system. As President of ATRA, Mr. Joyce is the Association's Chief Executive Officer and a member of its Board of Directors.

Upon graduation from Princeton University, Joyce served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John C. Danforth (R - MO) until 1984. Following graduation from Catholic University Law School, he served as minority counsel to the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space of the Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation from 1987 to 1989.

He then moved to the minority counsel position with the committee's Subcommittee on the Consumer where he led Republican efforts to establish uniform rules for product liability law. In addition, he advised Senators on issues pertaining to product safety, antitrust law, advertising, and consumer and telemarketing fraud.

Accepting leadership responsibilities with ATRA in 1994, Joyce has since appeared on numerous television and radio programs to discuss civil justice issues, and he has been quoted extensively in newspapers across the country. In 1995 the National Law Journal recognized him as one of its "40 under 40", a compilation of 40 influential lawyers in the nation under age 40.

Judge's Appeal Evidences 'Unappealing' Character

Regular readers of this blog may know by now that Roy L. Pearson Jr., an administrative law judge (ALJ) here in the District of Columbia and the plaintiff in the internationally infamous multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his neighborhood dry cleaners, has decided that he has not yet had enough.

Though a Superior Court trial judge ruled against him unequivocally in June; and though the defendants publicly offered an olive branch when they announced they would not seek an order requiring him to pay the nearly $83,000 in attorneys fees they'd accrued in fending him off for more than two years, Pearson nonetheless last week filed a notice of intent to appeal his ludicrous at best, delusional at worst case to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

According to Ted Frank at at Overlawyered.com notes, the average appeal within that particular court takes roughly a year and a half to run its course. So the legal nightmare that Jin and Soo Chung, the immigrant owners of Customs Cleaners, have suffered will continue while pursuit of their American Dream is again deferred.

In the meantime, Pearson remains on the D.C. government payroll, receiving his six-figure ALJ salary at taxpayers' expense. Though the D.C. commission responsible for deciding whether or not he'll be reappointed to a full 10-year term has reportedly sent Pearson a confidential letter laying out the reasons why they do not intend to reappoint him, D.C.'s bureaucratic rules allow him to request yet another hearing at which he can appeal their decision, too.

It stands to reason that this unappealing character, as fond of appeals as he is, will undoubtedly make such a request, though a hearing's not likely to be scheduled before the middle of next month. ATRA will keep you posted.

Published Tuesday, August 21, 2007 2:49 PM by Sherman Joyce

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