I WAS once sued in state court by a disgruntled reader who accused me of calling him a "crackpot." Fortunately, the suit went nowhere; the plaintiff's nutty, hand-scrawled complaint was apparently all the court needed to dismiss the case. That -- and the fact that even in Massachusetts, you're allowed to use the word "crackpot" when being harangued by one on the telephone.

But what if the plaintiff in my case hadn't been so plainly bonkers? What if he had been a lawyer, or even a judge ? What if he had been another Roy L. Pearson Jr.?

As everyone this side of Mazar-e-Sharif must know by now, Pearson is the administrative law judge in Washington, D.C., who sued his dry cleaners for $67.3 million over a missing pair of pants. He later reduced his claim to $54 million, and the case was tried in D.C. Superior Court last week.

Pearson, representing himself before Judge Judith Bartnoff, declared grandiosely that "never before in recorded history have a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices. " Bartnoff let him argue his case "for hour upon hour," The Washington Post reported, though he wasn't permitted to call all 63 of the witnesses he had hoped to put on the stand. Nor did Bartnoff allow him to rehash the saga of his 2004 divorce, which he insists the Virginia courts mishandled.

On the other hand, Pearson did testify that he has between 40 and 60 pairs of pants hanging in his closet, none of which, he emphasized, has cuffs. At one point he broke down in tears and had to ask for a recess. That happened as he was recounting the moment when the dry cleaner handed him what he says were the wrong trousers. (They were cuffed)...