Cultural Impact
The unusual circumstances of this case led the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and dozens of bloggers to refer to it as "The Great American Pants Suit," and to Pearson as "Judge Fancy Pants." The case has garnered considerable international attention. BBC News quoted Chris Manning, attorney for the Chung family, as saying that the experience for the Chungs has become the "American nightmare"—an ironic reference to the American Dream. Fortune magazine listed the case at #37 in its "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" of 2007. Cracked.com listed the case as "Exhibit 1" in its 2008 article "9 Insane Cases that Prove the US Legal System Is Screwed."
On July 24, 2007, the American Tort Reform Association and the Institute for Legal Reform of the United States Chamber of Commerce hosted a fundraiser for the Chungs to help pay their attorneys fees that reported having raised up to $64,000. The Chungs say they have received close to $100,000 from supporters to cover their attorneys' fees and lost business.
Citing a loss of revenue and emotional strain from the lawsuit, the Chungs announced, on September 19, 2007, that they have closed and sold the dry cleaning shop involved in the dispute. The Chungs still own one additional dry cleaning shop and have stated they will be focusing their attention and resources on their remaining shop.
The incident and lawsuit served as a basis for "Bottomless", an 18th-season episode of Law & Order.
Read more about this topic: Pearson V. Chung
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or impact:
“The sickly cultural pathos which the whole of France indulges in, that fetishism of the cultural heritage.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)