The Southern California wildfires have forced a three-month delay in trial of the litigation brought by the owners of Marilyn Monroe’s former Brentwood home, who object to the city designating the residence a historic cultural monument and contend the 2024 action wrongfully interferes with their desire to demolish it.
Attorneys for real estate heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, producer Roy Bank, previously filed court papers with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant in which they say the city is violating the law giving the home historical recognition. The pair bought the residence, which is adjacent to their current home, in July 2023 for $8.35 million and have obtained a demolition permit from the city.
PREVIOUSLY: LA City Council saves Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home from demolition
On Tuesday, Chalfant signed an order delaying a nonjury trial of the case from March 13 to June 17 after the couple’s lead attorney, Peter C. Sheridan, lost his Pacific Palisades home in that area’s fire. Sheridan also has trial scheduling conflicts in Philadelphia.
In addition, Bank and Milstein say they are under threat of evacuation in Brentwood and that Benjamin Hanelin, another of their attorneys, also lives in Pacific Palisades and may not be available to help with a briefing that is due to the court soon.
Bank and Milstein filed the petition last May 6, alleging “illegal and unconstitutional conduct” by the city “with respect to the house where Marilyn Monroe occasionally lived for a mere six months before she tragically committed suicide” on Aug. 4, 1962.
The couple filed an amended complaint on Aug. 8.
For 60 years through 14 owners and numerous remodels and building permits issued by the city, until 2024 no action was taken regarding the “now-alleged historic or cultural status of the house,” the amended petition states.
The owners of the Marilyn Monroe estate opposed the historical designation of the home, as did the Brentwood Community Council — representing its 36,000 stakeholders — the Brentwood Homeowners Association, the South Brentwood Homeowners Association, the Brentwood Park Homeowners Association and the Mandeville Canyon Association, the Bank-Milstein court papers state.
“The city ignored all these communicated resolutions of opposition in furtherance of its singular efforts to illegally designate the property and in so doing irreparably and knowingly harm petitioners and plaintiffs,” the petitioners further contend in their court papers.
Monroe, 36 years old when she died, would have been 98 today.