Redevelopment Officials Tired of Fighting : Hollywood: A judge is asked to assess sanctions against lawyers challenging a controversial renewal plan on grounds their lawsuit is frivolous.

City redevelopment officials, for years the target of a stream of lawsuits challenging their handling of the controversial Hollywood renewal effort, have had enough.

So tired are Community Redevelopment Agency officials of the legal challenges that they have asked a judge to levy $10,550 in sanctions against lawyers in the latest case, alleging that agency critics are frivolously taking up the court’s and the city’s time, and costing the taxpayers too much money.

“It is a monumental waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” Deputy City Atty. Dov Samuel Lesel said of the latest challenge. “It is totally frivolous.”

In the current case, the Endangered Property Owners of Hollywood group has asked a Superior Court judge to grant a new trial in a suit that contested the right of the city to disband an elected residents advisory panel against the wishes of its members.

According to the property owners’ group, the request for a new trial is based on significant, “startling” new evidence uncovered during a yearlong investigation.

The disbanded advisory group itself, the Project Area Committee, has already fought and lost its case before the same judge. The committee has appealed to a higher court.

That case, and other suits against the Community Redevelopment Agency, have kept lawyers for the city and the agency busy for years, according to Lesel and R. Bruce Tepper, a private attorney whose firm helps represent the agency.

Tepper said all the information presented by the property owners is nothing but “unvarnished, secondary evidence . . . and warmed-over rehashes on every issue that this court rejected twice previously.”

Previous lawsuits regarding the controversial Hollywood renewal project have been tolerated because they raised legitimate issues, Tepper and Lesel said. But the new lawsuit, they contend, does not.

“We’ve gone through an incredible exercise in spending government funds to reach the same conclusions reached a year ago,” Tepper told Superior Court Judge Kurt J. Lewin at a hearing Tuesday on the motion for a new trial. “We believe sanctions are merited.”

Outside the courtroom, after Lewin said he would take the issue under advisement and rule later, Tepper said preparations for that day’s hearing alone had meant a sizable public expense.

“Ten thousand dollars--that’s how much it has cost for this little exercise,” said Tepper. He said the sanctions being sought equaled his salary and that of other outside lawyers representing the Redevelopment Agency in preparation for Tuesday’s hearing alone. That figure, he said, pales in comparison to taxpayer money spent on the judge, courtroom time and personnel, and for the time several city attorneys had to divert from other issues.

Dale L. Gronemeier, one of three lawyers for the Hollywood neighborhood group targeted by the agency, scoffed at the attempts to sanction lawyers.

“I don’t even feel it is worth responding,” Gronemeier said. “It’s before (Judge Lewin), but I don’t think he’ll give it the time of day.”

Gronemeier said that he has received similar threats from the agency before and that it was the city’s way of intimidating the many contentious opponents of the redevelopment effort into silence. “They are seeking sanctions,” he said, “because they want to avoid the merits of the case.”

Assistant City Atty. Claude Hilker, senior counsel for the city, said he could recall no comparable retaliatory effort by his office in recent years. “I don’t remember any time that we have sought such sanctions for a group filing a frivolous lawsuit,” he said.

Donald Lippman, president of the Hollywood property owners group, said the several hundred pages of documents his group submitted to the court would reveal significant evidence in the case never before considered.

The evidence, based on a yearlong investigation, would show that the Community Redevelopment Agency “masterfully attempted to hoodwink” Lewin during last year’s lawsuit.

In particular, the suit alleges, the agency misrepresented or withheld crucial information regarding the City Council’s intent to have the Project Area Committee serve as advisers during the entire 30-year life of the renewal effort.

The property owners also allege that the residents group was told that it did not have the option of requesting funds for independent legal counsel, when state law specifically states that such committees shall be allocated funds for counsel, as well as an office, equipment, supplies and staff.

At a preliminary hearing in late August, Lewin ruled that the property owners were entitled to a more complete hearing, over strong objections of lawyers for the city and the Redevelopment Agency.

But at Tuesday’s hearing, Lewin questioned Gronemeier about whether the new lawsuit should have been sought at all, particularly considering that the property owners had a chance to raise the same issues last year during the first trial.

Lewin did not say when he will issue a ruling on the motion for a new trial, or whether he will consider sanctions in the case.

The Project Area Committee was ordered disbanded by Councilman Michael Woo in May, 1989, claiming it was not doing its job as the citizens’ watchdog group and had instead degenerated into a “forum for wacky behavior” that was impeding progress.

The advisory group sued the city, but Lewin ruled that the city had the right to disband it and replace it with the Hollywood Community Advisory Council, composed of Woo’s handpicked advisers.

In addition, at least one other lawsuit has been filed challenging the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan itself. That lawsuit remains on appeal.

“It’s not so much the number of challenges,” said Deputy City Atty. Lesel, “it’s that some go on for years.”