I think this one has to go out to Jerry and Doug

Small claims court win nets man 33,500 pennies

Associated Press - April 11, 2007

HOWELL TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- A penny saved is a penny earned, but one man says 33,500 pennies won are best donated to a worthy cause.

Bob Wilson of Livingston County's Howell Township won a small claims court case last month over motorcycle repairs and received a judgment of $335.

Karl Stepen, owner of NSK Motorsports in Fowlerville, said he paid Wilson in pennies to show his contempt for him and things he said in court "just basically to make us look bad."

"We paid him in legal U.S. currency," Stepen told the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus for a story Tuesday.

Wilson said he will donate the pennies to the Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency, which has helped him with heating bills. "It's not worth my time to reroll those," he said. Wilson said he bought a dirt bike for his 13-year-old son and took it to NSK in May to get it running.

He did not get the bike back until October, and he said it stopped working almost immediately. He took the bike back to NSK, and it sat unfixed for a few more months. He picked it up and took it to another shop, which charged him $900, he said.

Wilson said he filed the suit in small claims court because it wasn't fixed the first time. Stepen said he had the bike "for some time," but he's a one-man operation with as many as 70 motorcycles waiting to be repaired.

He said he did everything he could to help Wilson with the 30-year-old bike and offered to fix a second problem for free. Stepen said Wilson became impatient and verbally abusive, and showed up with a police officer to retrieve his bike.

District Judge Theresa Brennan, who handled the appeal for Wilson's claim, said she's never heard of someone paying the court in pennies in her 22 years of practicing law.

Still, she said, it's legal: "We don't dictate the form of payment."