Funny story

The fight on Sinawoy (below) reminded me of a true story of a similar incident, on a far grander scale, that occurred up in the Westport area back in the mid-80s.

I’d just joined a Southport law firm — I think it was my first week there — when one of the lawyers received a frantic call from a developer client. The developer had, over the fierce opposition of its neighbors, forced his project of a huge supermarket through the zoning process, including appeals, built it, and on this Friday afternoon, the final stocking of shelves was being completed in preparation for Saturday’s grand opening. Then the zoning enforcement officer showed up.

It turned out that the leader of that opposition had been keeping an eye on the construction, and, I don’t know how, figured out that the building was exactly 6 inches too high. She saved that discovery until the last minute, and then presented her evidence to the zoning officer, and he had obligingly issued a stop-work order that Friday afternoon.

It was the architech’s fault, not the town’s, but that really didn’t matter; the litigators in my department and the real estate lawyers in another huddled together and we gave out client our unanimous conclusion; “to use the technical legal term, you are truly fucked — call your errors and ommissions carrier”.

End result, the grand opening was canceled, groceries were returned to the warehouse, the roof was torn off and the walls lowered by half a foot. It must have taken at least six months, maybe a year to accomplish all that. Ouch.

It wasn’t my client, and I never did inquire how much that all cost, but it had to have been “substantial”.

I imagine the Sinawoy builder wouldn’t find this memory as amusing as I do.