Giant Sign Draws Criminal Charges

For weeks, the giant face of Mel Gibson has towered over Ventura Boulevard, promoting the actor’s upcoming movie “The Patriot” on a 50-foot-high sign that city prosecutors say is illegal.

On Tuesday, City Atty. James Hahn filed criminal charges against the owners of the sign company and the building sporting the advertisement.

The massive sign was erected in May without a permit, a misdemeanor, said Deputy City Atty. Don Cocek. It blankets much of the west side of Encino Medical Towers, an eight-story building at 16260 Ventura Blvd.

Last fall, residents complained when a huge sign advertising an Internet access company was posted on the same building. In December, the city’s Building and Safety Department ordered that the sign be removed, which it was.

But a few months later, the Mel Gibson banner popped up in the same place, Cocek said. The signs violate the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, a 1991 blueprint governing growth along the 17-mile strip, officials said.

“If [businesses] are going to start doing this on every building, Ventura Boulevard will become a jungle,” said Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino. “We fought for years to get a sign ordinance here.”

Prosecutors charged A. Stuart Rubin, the building’s owner, and Jack Fleishman and Byron Monson, owners of Big Image LLC, the company that posted the sign, with multiple violations of zoning and sign regulations.

The city routinely prosecutes people for breaking city sign laws, often by posting signs on utility poles, said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for Hahn. But the Encino Medical Towers sign is among the largest ever targeted, he said.

The defendants are scheduled for arraignment in Van Nuys Superior Court on July 19.