In 1985 the city of New York gave a developer permission to build a thirty-one-story apartment building. After the building was up, the city announced that its officials had misread their own zoning maps and demanded that twelve stories be slashed off the building. As a result of the city's ruling, the developer was forced to spend $1 million to pay for a 7,000-pound robot to smash down the newly illegal floors of the building, floor by floor.

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