Temple Sues Homeowners for Fees in Suit Over Lease

Striking back at homeowners who have opposed their lease of surplus Pierce College land, leaders of a Jewish temple went to court Monday to collect $58,000 in legal fees from the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization.

Leaders of the 600-family homeowners association immediately vowed to fight the request, which they labeled “frivolous” and “ridiculous.”

Officials of the Encino-based Temple Shir Chadash said they decided to demand the fees because the homeowners’ legal challenge of the temple’s lease of 17 1/2 acres from the Los Angeles Community College District has financially harmed their congregation.

“People just can’t go around suing people,” said Anita Green, president of the 400-member Reform congregation. “This is killing us.”

Unsuccessful Challenge

The homeowners group went to court Wednesday in an unsuccessful attempt to prove that the 75-year, $3-million lease violates laws that require a separation of church and state.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe dismissed the lawsuit, saying he “does not find any constitutional offense committed by the school district.”

Green said the homeowners’ lawsuit has stalled their efforts to rezone the leased land so that part of it can be developed for 24 single-family homes. That sublease to a developer is expected to pay the $3-million cost of the lease, she said.

“We’re facing $15,000 a month holding costs,” she said of the delay. “I’m not going to let this religious organization go down the drain. It’s bleeding us dry. We can’t go on this way.”

Green, who said last week that she hoped that “there would be a healing process” between the temple and the homeowners, would not speculate how the $58,000 demand would affect future relations with the nonprofit homeowners organization.

Rosemary Woodlock, president of the homeowners group, said she was astonished by the temple’s move. She said the temple was not the plaintiff in her group’s lawsuit.

“It’s ridiculous. I don’t think it’s justified. They’re not the people we sued,” she said. “I find it somewhat offensive.”

Said Little

Woodlock said temple lawyer Peter Scolney said little at last week’s court hearing. She charged, however, that Scolney earlier slowed the proceedings with pretrial interrogatories “that questioned whether homeowners organization members were taxpayers and thus had standing to sue, for example.”

The temple’s move follows the awarding last week of $735,000 in damages to be paid by the North Ranch Homeowners Assn. in Thousand Oaks, which had unsuccessfully sued a developer.

“It’s strictly intimidation,” said Gerald A. Silver, an Encino homeowner activist who is attempting to rally other residents groups in the state to fight that judgment. Silver predicted that nonprofit homeowner groups that lose such judgments will simply close up and then reorganize under another name to continue their fight against overdevelopment.