My favorite scene in the 1948 classic movie "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" involves a confrontation between Cary Grant and Melvin Douglas, the man who plays his attorney.
Grant's character has just torn down an old, dilapidated country house he bought after being told by numerous architects it was beyond repair. He is feeling proud of himself until Douglas bursts into his apartment to inform him he has just destroyed a house on which another man holds a mortgage."Just once why don't you come to me and find out if it's all right, if it's legal, before you go barging off and run yourself into another jam?" he demands.
It's a great piece of situational comedy that ends up costing Grant's character plenty of money.
Salt Lake County officials appear to be working on a remake with a local property owner, but it's not nearly as funny. Nor is it as clear who the good guys are.
For years, the folks who live on Prospector Drive in the unincorporated county have complained about a partially finished house that has become a neighborhood nuisance. They dubbed it the "graffiti house" because local youths used its unfinished plywood boards as a canvas.
Neighbors complained, and politicians promised action. But nothing was done - until last August. County crews finally visited the site with a wrecking crew. In two days, they destroyed the frame and foundation and left little trace of its existence.
Unfortunately, this happened to be only a few days after someone had purchased the house and paid $640.48 for the county to approve plans to turn it into a home.
The situation may be similar to the old movie, but the owner of the graffiti house, Roberta Fisher, doesn't see the predicament as particularly comic. In fact, she has learned that if Cary Grant had played a government official instead of a bumbling advertising executive, he could have shrugged and sent the owner of the mortgage a bill for demolition costs.
That happens to be what the county did to Fisher. The bill came to approximately $11,000.
Fisher and her son, Gary, have retained the services of an attorney, Nick Colessides. He said his client wouldn't have minded so much that the structure was removed. Fisher was planning to take that part down anyway. But what really angered her was the removal of the foundation.
At the moment, Colessides is trying to get the county to waive the $11,000 bill and to pay Fisher $60,000 - the price he believes she and her son will have to pay to start over from scratch.
But that's only one side of the story.
The county isn't ready to admit guilt on this one. First of all, Gary Fisher's check covered only part of the fees required before he could start building. The county had to approve his plans before he could obtain a building permit.
Second of all, the county had heard it all before, dating to 1991.
More than a year ago, county officials publicly targeted the graffiti house, along with six other eyesores, for demolition. But they kept running into hurdles. Last February, a different owner obtained a building permit just in time to remove the house from the path of an oncoming wrecking ball. Because of that, the county had to wait six months to examine whether progress had been made and whether demolition could continue. No progress was made.
Carl Ericksson, the county's inspection manager, said the Fishers were aware of all the legally recorded notices of demolition before they bought the place. The county didn't have much faith in the Fishers' intentions and simply ran out of patience.
"We had been burned at least twice on that house," he said. As for the foundation, it included a 19-foot drop into the basement, not the sort of thing the county would want a child to discover by accident.
Whether the county's "heard it all before" defense holds up remains to be seen. The Fishers haven't taken the matter to court yet. If they do, the county says it has met enough legal requirements to cover its actions.
It may not make for good cinema, but this one is worth watching.