Los Angeles city bosses rode roughshod over state and local laws by allowing a home where Hollywood beauty Marilyn Monroe briefly lived to be bulldozed to make way for a condominium project, a court action claims.
A residents' group is seeking to roll back the city council's approval for the five-unit project in the San Fernando Valley.
The house where the Some Like It Hot actress lived for a year was pulled down days before a hearing on whether to consider making it a historic monument, according to the Los Angeles Times.
City chiefs did not recommend considering the house as a monument since Monroe did not break into the film industry until years later. The demolition permit was obtained before the monument application was filed, officials said.
Monroe "only resided at the property for one year and did not live in the unit during the productive period of her career", a report by city planning officials concluded.
The residents' group, Save Valley Village, argues that the home captured the essence of Monroe's life at a critical stage.
"While Norma Jean (Baker) was born at County Hospital in Lincoln Heights, Marilyn Monroe's career was born while living in this house," the lawsuit states.
The group also claims the council illegally made a deal to support any development project supported by the council member who represents the area.
"If your hands are bound by a behind-the-scenes voting agreement, then obviously you're not deliberating in public," said Richard MacNaughton, a lawyer representing the residents' group.
The city is reviewing the complaint.
Vanessa Rodriguez, the spokeswoman for council president Herb Wesson, said she had not seen the details of the lawsuit but saw no issue, in general, with council members listening to the politician who represents the area of a new project.
"The locally elected representative is the best equipped individual to provide their city council colleagues with guidance" on issues in that district, she told the newspaper.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here