Utah Man Pays $82 Fine in Pennies

SALT LAKE CITY - A Manti man has a penny for Sanpete County's thoughts. About 8,200 of them, actually.

Grant Petersen withdrew that many copper coins from his bank and delivered them in a bucket to pay an $82 fine he got for driving with a burnt-out headlight.

Court officials are apparently not amused, and have asked Petersen to come back in and offer a more "acceptable" form of payment. They say state policy allows clerks to reject unusual forms of payment, and it's going to waste county resources for someone to count all that change.

Petersen says he doesn't plan on honoring that request. He says money is money, and U.S. law provides that coins are legal tender.

< Aside from the fact that it's Money he's paying, I don't suppose they thought it'd take them less time to bitch about it than to count out one stack of 100 and then just make 82 more stacks the same height? >