A Clash of Civic Codes and Lifestyle in San Marino

In San Marino, where homeowners must obey some of the country’s strictest aesthetic regulations, the house on Somerset Place stands out like a beat-up Pinto on Rodeo Drive.

Neighbors in this conservative enclave of stately homes call it the “jungle.”

The front garden’s shrubs and cactuses obscure the one-story bungalow in a city that cites people for dead lawns or leaving a car in a driveway for a few days.

The buckling driveway gates are padlocked and carry signs declaring “No Trespassing” and “Private Property.” White paint covers the windowpanes. Rusting cars occupy the backyard.

City officials say that it is more than just an eyesore. They contend that it is a public nuisance.

So officials want to put an end to more than a decade of complaints and battles. On May 17, the city filed a lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction giving Mathilde Victoria Claypool, who has lived there since December 1964, 30 days to file a response or clear away the old cars, overgrown vegetation, unsafe patio and the broken-down fence. If she does not take such remedial steps, the city intends to clean up the property and bill her for the costs.

“How could she want to move into a city like San Marino with a home like this,” said David Saldana, who heads the city’s Planning and Building Department. “She isn’t like your usual San Marino resident. She marches to the beat of a different drum.”

To some it is a clash of two San Marino ideals--homeowner’s private property rights and the city’s tradition of strict regulation.

For others, it is a David and Goliath struggle between an eccentric woman strapped for cash and a conformist bureaucracy.

“San Marino is trying to act like a condominium association but, sadly for them, they are bound by the Constitution,’ said attorney Chris Sutton, who has represented the 70-something Claypool.

Claypool has not replied to recent letters from him, Sutton said, so he assumes he is no longer her lawyer.

But Sutton said the city is discriminating against an elderly and legally blind widow because she does not have the money to make the property as perfect as her neighbors’ homes.

Claypool did not respond to a reporter’s efforts to contact her.

Claypool is a well-educated French woman who came to this country as a GI bride after World War II, Sutton said. She does not own a telephone and gets mail at a post office box, she has told the city.

“I have no existing nuisance. I have the right to live in peace in my home,” she wrote the city manager last year. “My property is not a battleground.”

Mayor Betty Brown said the city has been reluctant to be the “heavy-handed big guy” when it comes to Claypool, but there will be no more laissez-faire.

The mayor said that she understands neighbors’ frustrations, but that it is not easy applying the rules to someone who will not cooperate.

In the 1980s, officials say, city work crews were sent to slice away Claypool’s vegetation and clean up the frontyard after complaints from neighbors.

Then in 1994, the city filed a criminal complaint, saying that the property violated state building codes because of overgrown vegetation and a broken-down fence.

She pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of maintaining a fence in disrepair. A judge dismissed other charges, court records show.

Four years later, the property was worse than ever, city officials contend. So in June 1998, officials, armed with a warrant, searched the property and said they found numerous code violations that involved the conditions on the property and an array of four rusted, inoperable automobiles.

Shortly thereafter, the Planning Commission declared the home a public nuisance that must be cleaned up.

Although Claypool did not attend the hearing, she wrote the city manager, saying, “It’s not a public home. It’s a lifestyle.”

Claypool hired Sutton to appeal the decision, but then withdrew the challenge.

“Let’s go back to court and discuss it. I have not donated my home yet to you,” she wrote City Hall.

Sutton said many of the conditions cited in the city’s complaints do not actually constitute violations of any city codes. He and his family have cut away some of the vegetation themselves, he said.

“This [lawsuit] will drive her from her home,” Sutton said. “Neighbors and the city want her out of San Marino.”

Mayor Brown said the city is just upholding codes that keep San Marino beautiful and that everyone else in the neighborhood obeys.

Officials expect there will be a court hearing before they take any action.

“Mrs. Claypool is very unique,” Saldana said. “Everything involving this property is unusual.”