Hearsay

As eminent wordsmith John Lahr, senior drama critic for the New Yorker since 1992, once observed: “To a man with only a hammer, everything is a nail.”

Seldom has a better explanation been proffered for occasional, inexplicable human utterings and outbursts of machismo that offend the sensibilities of rational people.

Lahr's epigram may even explain why an administrative law judge in Washington, D.C., sued a dry cleaning establishment for millions because it allegedly and temporarily mislaid a pair of pants from a $1,000 suit.

(It is perhaps irrelevant to note that the waylaid trousers had blue and maroon pinstripes, which one would not know if they were worn under the judicial robe.)

But $54 million? The ALJ's charge of fraudulent display of two signs – “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service” – tallied out to 12 violations by three defendants over 1,200 days at about $1,200 per violation, plus money to rent a car every weekend for 10 years to patronize another cleaner.

Testimony in the case revealed that the cleaners found the pants within a week, but the piqued plaintiff said that garment was not his. The proprietors, three members of an immigrant Korean family, offered successive settlements of $3,000, $4,600 and $12,000 in vain.

Justice prevailed, as expected, and the court ruled for the defendants. The ALJ was nailed for $1,000 in court costs, but the Chung family was hammered with two years of legal fees at about $83,000 and has filed a motion to recover that.

A fund-raising event was held in D.C. on July 24 by the Institute for Legal Reform and the American Tort Reform Association. Charitable guests were permitted to view the errant trousers, but only under the watchful eye of a security guard.

At that time, about $64,000 had been contributed. The list of benefactors includes Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Caterpillar, State Farm Insurance and the Asian-American Bar Association of Missouri.

Wrinkles in the pants suit persist. The plaintiff, reportedly a Northwestern University law grad, filed a motion to reconsider, which was denied, and has said he will appeal. (His ALJ appointment may be terminated before the case is closed.)

“The manifest absurdity of it is too obvious to require explanation,” said a former chief ALJ of the Labor Relations Board. He probably hadn't read John Lahr's take on the hammer and the nail.

Pete Seeger wrote a song a half-century ago that was titled “If I Had a Hammer.” He sang that he would hammer in the morning and in the evening, and hammer out danger and a warning.

The allusion makes one mindful of the state budget impasse that has kept the legislative sausage-makers on overtime since the end of May, while the government was left gasping along with month-to-month resuscitation.

What has been missing is Seeger's pledge to “hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters.” (“Instead of the state's elected leaders coming together in good faith to forge a common agenda, things have gotten personal; and ugly,” wrote William Daley in a Tribune op-ed piece.)

The ongoing tiff among the House speaker, Senate president and governor should not have been a surprise. Roosevelt University prof and political pundit Paul Green recalled during a forum last December the lack of mention of a budget during the election campaign.

“Alice was a realist in Wonderland compared to Springfield leadership,” Green jibed as emcee at a Union League Club breakfast. “You can't shuffle the same deck and get more cards.”

Once again, government swept cash from funds previously thought sacred. The total authorization in Public Act 94-839 was for $200 million, and some of the money belongs to the bench and bar of Illinois. The IOUs are suspect under current circumstances.

It was reported last month that $67,200 was taken June 30 from the Lawyers' Assistance Program Fund, which is derived from a $7 portion of the annual attorney registration fee.

And $906,000 was diverted from the state court's Mandatory Arbitration Fund, which supports county alternative dispute resolution programs through fees on appearances in civil cases.

A class action suit was filed July 5 on behalf of every registered attorney who has contributed to the Lawyers' Assistance Program and every litigant who has paid the civil case appearance fee. The “hammer of justice,” in Seeger's concluding verse, may be poised to right a perceived wrong.

Couldn't it have been more proficient for the lovelorn brothers and sisters of state leadership to lay down their cudgels and pick up trumpets to herald timely resolution of the budget predicament?