As World War II ground on, a story about two neighbors feuding over flowers landed on the front pages of the two Minneapolis dailies. Signe Erickson of Excelsior sued her neighbor, an Excelsior police officer, for $5,000 for false arrest after she was hauled to jail wearing only a coat, a slip and slippers on a cold November night. Her alleged crime? Pouring salt on his flowers. (Both raised flowers for sale.) After a judge cleared her of that disorderly conduct charge, she took the cop to court – and won a $500 judgment. The tears she shed on the witness stand probably swayed the jury. The Tribune captured the scene in this page one story:

Suing Woman Still Weeps as She Thinks
About Chilly Arrest in Slip and Slippers

Mrs. Signe Erickson of Excelsior still weeps a little when she thinks about how her neighbor, who happened to be an Excelsior police officer, had her arrested on a cold November night last fall when she was dressed only in a slip, slippers and a coat.

	Signe Erickson

She cried a little before District Judge Vince A. Day late Wednesday as trial of her suit against the neighbor, John Kohnkey, Excelsior police officer, for $5,000 for false arrest, got under way.

On the night of Nov. 17, she testified, she had had company. The guests had left, she had washed the dishes and was taking the garbage out to the edge of her lot when she was “grabbed in the back.”

Freeman “Dooley” Hoag, acting in Kohnkey’s behalf, did the grabbing, she testified.

“He grabbed me and put me in Kohnkey’s garage,” she said.

Then Kohnkey came, she said, and accused her of pouring salt onto his flowers. Both she and Kohnkey raise flowers for sale.

Kohkey then put her into his car and took her to the county jail in Minneapolis where she spent the night, she said.

“I asked him if I could go home first,” she testified. “I had on only a slip and a coat over it, and he didn’t answer me.”

She said she was afraid her husband would awaken and, not finding her in bed, might have a heart attack. He had a bad heart, she said.

A friend came to the jail in answer to her pleadings with the jailer that she “wasn’t a bum” and arranged to have her released.

At her trial before Justice Tom Bergin, on a complaint by Kohnkey charging her with disorderly conduct, she said Kohnkey testified she had been spreading salt on his garden flowers.

He said, she asserted, that he had found the pan in which she had carried out the garbage, and that it was “sparkling with salt.”

There was no salt in the pan when she had it, she declared.

“You can cut my throat if there was,” was her testimony.

Justice Bergin was called to the stand to testify from his records that he had acquitted her of the disorderly conduct charge at the trial Nov. 25.

Testimony will continue Thursday.

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