Castle Owner Calls ‘Savior’ a Home Wrecker : Lawsuit: Defendant is stunned: ‘These people are not from here--they’re not from this dimension.’

The owner of a unique three-story castle in conformity-minded Irvine has filed suit against the topless-nightclub owner who saved her house from a city demolition crew.

Five months after hailing him as her personal savior, Fern Ganish now accuses Mark Bailey of fraud, conspiracy and “negligent infliction of emotional distress,” saying in a lawsuit filed Monday that instead of rescuing her 8,500-square-foot, rock-faced mansion, he ruined it.

Ganish also sued contractors and lawyers enlisted by the would-be good Samaritan in his quest to save the Ganish house, saying the Bailey group mishandled $65,000 of her money.

Shortly after learning about the lawsuit Tuesday, a flabbergasted Bailey called Ganish and her husband irrational ingrates.

“I thought they would just go away--I just didn’t want to be ‘Ganished’ anymore,” said Bailey, who insists he also spent $65,000 of his own money on the Ganish house. “These people are not from here--they’re not from this dimension.”

The suit, filed Monday in Orange County Superior Court, is the latest in a bizarre 10-year legal battle involving the baronial mansion where Ganish has lived since 1978 with her husband and their three children. City officials and neighbors have long complained that the house, undergoing remodeling for 12 years, is an eyesore.

Ganish alleges that Bailey essentially misled her when he volunteered to bring her infamous, half-finished house in line with local building codes.

Last March, weary of pressuring the Ganishes in vain to complete their remodeling project, city officials said they had no choice but to knock down the house, which some call “The Kron Street Castle.”

But just hours before the wrecking ball was set to swing, Bailey rushed in and promised to pay whatever was necessary to finish the house.

Though he had never met the Ganishes, Bailey stood on their grassless front lawn and told reporters that the family was being persecuted by the same kinds of bureaucrats with whom he regularly skirmishes as owner of a Lake Forest bar called Captain Creams, where topless women dance and occasionally wrestle in pits of hot shaving cream.

Tuesday, Bailey sounded a different tune, siding squarely with city officials and wishing aloud that he had never heard of Ganish and her husband, Haym.

“Here’s two people that have just conducted a pity party for the last 13 years,” he said. “I’ve got an ulcer that says ‘Ganish’ on it.”

The Ganishes declined to speak to reporters Tuesday. Their lawyer said they were suffering from intense emotional distress, and Bailey was the culprit.

“His whole action in this was not only to their detriment, but cost them a lot of money,” said Eric Traut, a Yorba Linda lawyer, the latest in a string of people who have represented the Ganishes.

So great is the distress caused by Bailey’s interference, Traut said, that Haym Ganish does not feel well enough to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The major point of contention between Bailey and the Ganishes centers on $65,000 that Fern Ganish placed in an escrow account, part of the deal Bailey helped broker with the city.

Traut said the Ganishes believed their money was being held in reserve for construction costs that might arise in the future.

The Ganishes, he said, didn’t understand that Bailey and his construction crew were regularly drawing on the $65,000 for labor and materials.

Additionally, Traut said, Bailey’s workers were careless and shoddy, installing drywall before installing heating ducts, and sealing off sections of the upstairs that they chose not to repair.

“A lot of this stuff was slapped up so it would fit within the code provided, so the city could get out and wouldn’t have to deal with it,” he said. “Aesthetically and fundamentally, a lot of it isn’t functional and will never work.”

Traut acknowledged that Bailey solved the Ganishes’ main problem.

“The one nice thing that came out of all this is, it did eventually get approved by the city, so they didn’t get their house demolished.”

But he added: “It’s really unlivable. As soon as the rains start, this place will be leaking all over.”

Bailey said he didn’t promise to plug every hole in the house--only to do what city officials required.

He said Fern Ganish misled him by promising that problems with the house were minor, when his assessment was the whole structure teetered on the brink of being a hazard.

Bailey said he is out $65,000, and many friends he persuaded to help finish the house are no longer speaking to him.

“I can show you a lot of women who have cut fingers from wielding hammers,” he said, referring to his exotic dancers. “We took out three 50-yard trash cans of crud from that house. Three of those! These girls . . . are dancers, not contractors, but they went down to help.”