A Brentwood couple is suing the metropolis of Los Angeles and Mayor Bass, claiming their constitutional rights were violated when metropolis officers blocked them from demolishing the home where Marilyn Monroe died in 1962.
In a 37-page criticism that accuses the metropolis of collusion and bias, the lawsuit filed by owners Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank claims L.A. “deprived Plaintiffs of their intended demolition of the house and the use and enjoyment of their Property without any actual benefit to the public.”
It’s yet another chapter in a saga surrounding the destiny of the well-known property, which kicked off in 2023 when Milstein, a rich actual property heiress, and Bank, a actuality TV producer with credit including “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” purchased the home for $8.35 million. They own the property next door and hoped to tear down Monroe’s place to develop their property.
The pair shortly obtained demolition permits from the Department of Building and Safety, but once their plans grew to become public, an outcry erupted. A legion of historians, Angelenos and Monroe followers claimed the Nineteen Twenties hang-out, where the actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of the metropolis’s historical past.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents L.A.’s eleventh council district where the home is positioned, said she acquired a whole lot of calls and emails urging her to defend it. In September 2023, she held a press convention dressed as Monroe — shiny crimson lipstick, bobbing blond hair — urging the City Council to declare it a landmark.
The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission began the landmark software course of in January 2024, barring the homeowners from destroying the home in the meantime. L.A. City Council unanimously voted to designate it as a historic cultural monument a few months later, formally saving it from destruction.
It’s not the first authorized problem introduced by Milstein and Bank. The pair sued the metropolis in 2024, accusing the metropolis of “backdoor machinations” in preserving a home that doesn’t deserve to be a historic cultural monument.
An L.A. Superior Court Judge threw out the swimsuit in September 2025, calling it “an ill-disguised motion to win so they can demolish the home.”
The newest lawsuit consists of a selection of damages, claiming the property’s monument standing has turned it into a vacationer attraction, bringing trespassers that leap over the partitions surrounding the property. In November, burglars broke into the home looking for memorabilia, the swimsuit alleges.
The lawsuit accuses the metropolis of taking no efforts to cease trespassers and failing to compensate them for their loss of use and enjoyment of the property. It also notes that the owners supplied to pay to relocate the home, but the metropolis ignored them.
An aerial view of the home where actress Marilyn Monroe died is seen on July 26, 2002 in Brentwood, California.
(Mel Bouzad/Getty Images)
The feud has stirred up a bigger dialog on what precisely is price defending in Southern California, a area loaded with architectural marvels and Old Hollywood haunts swirling with celebrity legend and gossip.
Fans claim the home, positioned on fifth Helena Drive, is too iconic to be torn down. Monroe purchased it for $75,000 in 1962 and died there six months later, the only home she ever owned by herself. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends here” — was adorned in tile on the entrance porch, including to the property’s lore.
Milstein and Bank claim it has been transformed so many occasions over the years, with 14 totally different homeowners and over a dozen renovation permits issued over the last 60 years, that it bears no resemblance to its former self. Some Brentwood locals take into account it a nuisance, since followers and tour buses flock to the tackle for photos, even though the only factor seen from the road is the privateness wall.
“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” their earlier lawsuit claimed.
With their newest lawsuit, Milstein and Bank are searching for a court docket order permitting them to demolish the home and compensation for the decline in property worth following the metropolis’s choice to declare it a monument.
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