Here's a true story, involved a warrant for my arrest and a sheriff who told me he'd better not catch me in his county again but it was 35 years ago so I can tell it.
We rented a beach cottage on St. George Island, Apalachicola County FL. My wife was 8 months pregnant at the time and having trouble sleeping so she called up the rental agent and asked some questions about the accommodations, told the agent she was having trouble sleeping and asked about the beds and what condition they were in. The agent said the cottage had just been remodeled and everything including the beds was brand new.
Well, that was BS, the place was OK but not remodeled, everything was old and the beds were some of the worst I've ever seen in a rental property, old, lumpy, springs sticking up, etc.
Well, the more we thought about it, the more pissed we were because the rental agent flat out lied to us. It was a local mom & pop operation and it was the owner my wife had talked to. We had paid for the place with a check, so when we got home we stopped payment on it. We wrote the rental broker a long letter, told them we were stopping payment and explained why. We included another check for $100 less, so we basically short-paid them $100, just on principle.
A couple months later I get a call from a local detective in my home state telling me he has a warrant for my arrest for passing bad checks in Florida. I told him what happened and he said it sounded like a civil matter, not a criminal case and he gave me the number of the DA in Tallahassee and suggested I call him. So I did, and he returned the call within five minutes. I started to explain but he cut me off. Said he was familiar with the warrant because he'd denied it when it first came up but then the locals came back when he was on vacation and got it approved. To say he was pissed is an understatement. He said he'd read our letter, our position was entirely reasonable, and then he told me they'd had similar problems with this particular rental agency. He gave me the number of the county sherriff and told me I should call him, tell him I spoke to the DA, the warrant was cancelled, and I wasn't going to pay another penny.
So I called the sheriff and played dumb. Asked him what I needed to do to make it right. He thought he had me over a barrel, and that's how the conversation went. Told me I needed to send another check for the original amount (which would have doubled the rental fee), and also pay the rental broker for his time and trouble. I asked him how much that would be and I sh*t you not, he said "hold on I'll ask him," they were eating lunch together. So then I spilled, told him I'd talked to the DA in Tallahassee, the warrant was toast, and I wasn't gonna pay another red cent. He went all Buford Pusser on me, started sputtering, and told me he'd better not catch me in his county again.
I told him that wouldn't be a problem and hung up on his sorry ass.
