Traffic court magistrate Julian Broome said he doesn’t want to talk about this matter because he doesn’t want to give Mike Jones and his wild legal argument any publicity.

I’m sure that is so, but I’m not sure the legal argument is as far-fetched as everyone except Jones seems to hope.

Jones went to court last week to contest the smallest offense he could be charged with: parking his car over the line that divides parallel parking spaces in downtown Bradenton. The fine: $25.

But Jones, a former Florida Highway Patrol dispatcher and now a warehouse manager, went to Broome’s court loaded for bear.

He had spent hours doing research and getting information from Bradenton Police and other officials. He paid far more than $25 to hire a court reporter to transcribe the proceedings in traffic court.

He hoped to take his case all the way to the Florida Supreme Court, which he thought would likely be necessary to make his preferred defense argument stick.

Not the little argument that was his first reason for objecting to the ticket. That one is simple: Jones thought the ticket should have been voided because he parked that way only because a truck was parked over the line behind him, leaving too little room. He was sure the parking enforcer knew that.

But after he failed to get the Bradenton Police Department to nix the ticket, his research continued.

He struck gold. He thinks.

He found a state requirement that, as he understands it, is being flat out ignored by the city and the judicial system. If so, every ticket written by Bradenton personnel and police and contested before traffic court magistrate Julian Broome, for years, has been decided in the wrong place.

Jones says the traffic court in Manatee County was never properly granted jurisdiction over Bradenton tickets.

The state law says if cities don’t want to provide a traffic hearing officer, it may sign an interlocal agreement to get the cases handled by the magistrate who handles county cases. Jones asked for a copy of that agreement. It took days before city police agreed there was no such document on record, and no memory of one.

"We looked for records and the court clerk did,” BPD Capt. Josh Cramer said.

Jones must have felt like Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde," when she realizes the murder victim’s daughter is lying about being in the shower during the shooting.

But Cramer and a clerk of court spokeswoman don’t think that means what Jones says it means, which is that every Bradenton ticket unsuccessfully contested in Broome’s court resulted in improper fines.

They found a 1996 administrative order signed by the top judge in this circuit to authorize handling city tickets in traffic court.

But, so what? That might give Broome the go-ahead to accept such cases brought under an interlocal agreement, but what if there is no agreement?

A clerk spokeswoman pointed out that the law says the city “may” make such an agreement, but does not say that is the only way to transfer jurisdiction.

Interesting argument. Sounds like a stretch. The “may,” as I read it, means the city can do an interlocal agreement or it can just handle its own cases.

I’m wondering if everyone but Jones is just hoping to slide by without any court taking a serious look.

Broome threw Jones a curve. When Jones came to court and started arguing politely that maybe Broome had no jurisdiction on city cases, Broome just shrugged it off and started addressing the parking facts.

“He started being my defense attorney,” Jones said. He got the parking enforcer to admit that the parking space was partially taken up by a truck. Then Broome dismissed the ticket.

Time to celebrate? No.

“I wanted to lose,” he explained. With a loss he could file an appeal and take his potentially disruptive jurisdiction argument to a higher court. Broome, it seemed, knew what was coming and avoided that.

True? Broome didn’t answer, exactly, but said a few things.

“Technically he was probably guilty,” Broome told me. But in his court, reasonable explanations are weighed. Jones had one. So Broome dismissed the ticket.

Yeah, but was Broome avoiding the bigger issue? Broome would only say the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office had been informed Jones was coming and thought he must be a sovereign citizen, a fanatic who thinks all courts are acting illegally.

Not so, it turned out. Jones seemed like a nice guy, Broome said. He just had an argument that … well, that Broome won't talk about.

“We’re sure we are handling this properly,” a court clerk spokeswoman told me.

I get the feeling they aren’t as confident as they claim. Jones says he isn’t done. It's the principle, and all that. Though busy working three jobs, he still wants to go to a higher court.

So, I suggested, you need a case where the parking is so flagrantly illegal it can’t be dismissed?

He laughed and said yes.

“I told my wife we have free parking in Bradenton.”

— Tom Lyons can be reached at tom.lyons@heraldtribune.com.