At first, I read this and thought to myself -- "charming, but they didn't really pay $5K for the chair, so much as for their lack of proper legal documentation."

Then I thought on it a bit more and realized -- it was the chair that cost them $5K, because if they hadn't established the paper trail via the e-mail chain about giving the chair back, they wouldn't have had the hangup on 'without prejudice'.

Be careful with email, folks. In the end, that is your paper trail.