Detective Michael Tritter is one of House's chief nemeses in the third season, with an entire story arc covering the relationship between Tritter and House in the first half of the season.

Tritter comes to the clinic fearing he has an STD as he shows severe irritation in the area of his groin. House is assigned to see him, and Tritter sees him taking Vicodin. House immediately notices Tritter is chewing nicotine gum and easily diagnoses him with dry skin, a common side effect of the gum. He prescribes "lubricant, or if you're cheap, foreplay." However, Tritter is not convinced and insists that House take a sample for testing. House does so, but then insists he has to take Tritter's temperature rectally. House inserts the thermometer, walks out of the room, and throws the sample away.

Tritter goes to Cuddy and Cuddy insists that House apologize before Tritter sues. Tritter says that he would prefer to beat up House, but will accept an apology, but House refuses to either apologize or back down, figuring Tritter is a bully. He suggests that Tritter merely tell his macho pals he scared the bad doctor into submission.

However, when House is riding home on his motorcycle, he is pulled over by Tritter. Tritter notes that the fact he was a policeman was on his chart, which House hadn't bothered to read. House tells him to write a ticket, but on a pretext, Tritter searches House and finds his Vicodin. He arrests House for drug possession.

Wilson bails out House, but as House returns to work, he soon learns that Tritter got a search warrant for his house and found a stash of about 600 pills. Tritter adds trafficking to the charges.

Tritter is convinced that House is an addict and puts pressure on his co-workers to testify against him. Wilson is in a bind because House has stolen his prescription pad to write himself prescriptions. Wilson lies and says he signed them himself, although Tritter has noticed that the signatures don't match. He impunds Wilson's car and freezes his account, to make it even worse, he makes it so that Wilson is no longer authorized to write prescriptions, Wilson instead uses Cameron to write his prescriptions but when House refuses, Wilson refers all of his patients to different Oncologists and shuts down his practice.

House's team refuses to turn him in as well, although Tritter goes after their weaknesses. He goes after Cameron by appealing to her love for House. He goes after Foreman by promising to help his brother get out of prison. He goes after Chase by making it look like he has already co-operated. However, it is Wilson who actually caves first; after he hears that House has struck Chase, and almost cut a patient's arms and legs off. He figures House needs help and works out a deal with Tritter to get House into rehab.

However, House refuses the deal. Eventually, Wilson backs out too after he sees House save yet another patient. Tritter offers House another deal with a 48 hour deadline. However, in a fit of withdrawal and pain, House goes after a dead patient's Oxycodone. When House figures he has no choice but to take the deal, he finds Tritter already knows about the Oxycodone and won't accept the deal any more.

House enters rehab on the eve of trial, but Tritter isn't impressed. The preliminary hearing goes forward and House enrages the court by leaving to deal with a seriously ill patient severly lowering House's chances of winning. House later returns and finds Cuddy perjuring herself on the stand by saying she swapped the Oxycodone bottle with actually a placebo bottle, and she has records to back it up. Tritter finally concedes defeat after the judge figures that the charges may be a personal attack against House for something he did to Tritter. Following this, Tritter approaches House and wishes him luck and says that he hopes he is wrong about House.

Although Tritter attacks House over House's addiction to Vicodin, House notes in their first meeting that Tritter is using nicotine gum to get over his own addiction to cigarettes.