Sunday, March 27, 2011

As It Stands: Gaming the system -- frivolous lawsuits flourish in our courts


By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Posted: 03/27/2011 02:40:32 AM PDT
I'm always amused, and sometimes disgusted, to read about frivolous lawsuits that regularly pop up like jack-in-the-boxes in the news. The most recent that caught my eye was a mom who sued a preschool for not prepping her 4-year-old for Ivy League colleges.
No, I'm not kidding. The New York Daily News recently reported it. The plaintiff is Nicole Imprescia of Manhattan, who filed suit against New York Avenue Preschool for a refund of the $19,000-a-year tuition she had paid. Why? Are you sitting down for this?
Imprescia claims the school jeopardized her 4-year-old daughter Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school by not preparing her for the admissions exam one has to take to get in. And here's the clincher: She claims the preschool ruined her daughter's chances of being a future Ivy Leaguer.

No joke. She contends her “very smart” daughter was put in a class with kids half her age and that the focus of the class was on shapes and colors. I wonder. The school's website indicates students do more than just learn shapes and colors.
One of the many things they learn is the alphabet. There's much more, of course. The preschool had never been sued before in its 20 years of existence.
Imprescia says it's more “one big playroom” than a preschool. Oh, my. How terrible is that? We're talking about 2- to 4-year-olds. If all they learned was shapes and colors, she might have a point. Maybe. That doesn't appear to be the case, based upon available information.
That's still not the final kicker to this story. Imprescia took her daughter out of school after a mere month, according to her lawyer, Mathew Paulose.
Her daughter might have had a chance to learn the letter “C” before she pulled the plug on the preschool. In all fairness, this was her daughter's second year there, and it seems she wasn't excelling. Whose fault was that? Apparently not the daughter's, according to Mom.
She's filed a lawsuit because she thinks her 4-year-old won't get into Harvard. Is this the American way of handling things? Sue the school rather than face up to her own responsibilities as a parent?

I understand that “lawyering” is a competitive profession, but I think many lawyers have been reduced to carnival barkers. They jump though frivolous lawsuits for money like trained sea lions jump through flaming hoops. As for you legitimate lawyers, you can exhale now, secure in the knowledge that you're doing the right thing. I'm not talking about you. OK?

Arguably the most notorious of frivolous lawsuits was Pearson v. Chung. This was the case of Roy Pearson, a judge in Washington, D.C., who sued a dry cleaning business for $67 million (later lowered to $54 million). According to Pearson, the dry cleaners lost his pants (which he brought in for a $10.50 alteration) and refused his demands for a large refund.
Pearson believed a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign in the window of the shop legally entitled him to a refund for the cost of the pants, estimated at $1,000. The $54 million total included $2 million in “mental distress” and $15,000 which he estimated to be the cost of renting a car every weekend to go to another dry cleaner.
As It Stands, Nicole Imprescia's beef with the preschool may seem pale in comparison to Pearson v. Chung, but it's another example of people gaming a system that probably needs an overhaul.



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