1999 never happened and this isn't true.
There was a tire shop outside Atlantic City that had fallen on hard times. Owner Chris French just wasn't getting the business he needed to stay afloat. So, one day, he came up with a plan to get more customers - he started dumping nails on roads not too far from the shop.
It was a sneaky move, but it worked like a charm. Customers started coming in with flat tires, and the shop was suddenly bustling with business. French was making money hand over fist, and all he had to do was keep dumping nails.
But, as with all good things, it couldn't last forever. One day, a customer, Mrs.Marigold got suspicious. She had been coming to the shop for months, always with flat tires, and she started to wonder if something was amiss. She did a bit of investigating and discovered that the tire shop was the source of all the nails on the road. Well, Mrs.Marigold was not happy, and she decided to take legal action. She sued the tire shop for damages, and the case went to court.
In court, the tire shop's lawyer argued that the nails on the road were actually a public service.
"Think about it," he said, "if we didn't put nails on the road, people would be driving around with over-inflated tires all the time. We're actually doing them a favor by forcing them to get their tires checked."
The judge wasn't convinced and ruled in favor of the customer. The tire shop was forced to pay a hefty fine and lost most of their customers as a result.
The court even found that French had begun secretly planting nails on his own employees' tires too! That's right, they were causing their own employees to get flat tires just to make it look like the nails were coming from somewhere else. Talk about dedication to the cause!
In the end, the tire shop went out of business, and the town's residents were left to wonder how they had ever fallen for such a ridiculous scheme. As for Chris French, he went on to open a restaurant equipment company specializing in dishes that caused heartburn. He sold them all to Trump Taj Mahal and retired to Bend, Oregon.
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