Los Angeles Sued by Marilyn Monroe Homeowners

The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s final home are sick of the City of Los Angeles’ monkey business.

Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank have filed a lawsuit against the city and its mayor after the city moved to prevent the owners’ planned demolition of the Brentwood manse where Monroe died, the California Post reported.

The couple purchased the property at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in 2023 for nearly $8.4 million. Soon thereafter, they applied for and received city approval to demolish the home and build a new residence from the ground up. In 2024, city officials designated Monroe’s former home a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument after Milstein and Bank’s permits were already approved.

“In doing so, the city has turned the property into a tourist attraction, attracting (as the city wanted and expected) traffic congestion on the short, narrow dead-end street adjacent to the property along with numerous trespassers leaping over and onto property walls to get into the “designated” house (which cannot be seen from the public realm due to the property wall and landscaping),” the court filings state, according to the Post.

As a result of the heightened interest around the home, the homeowners claim that burglars searching for memorabilia broke into the home in November. They even had to hire their own private security for the property.

Milstein and Bank said that the city never worked to deem the building historically significant in the decades since Monroe’s death after it changed hands multiple times and underwent several renovations. By declaring the structure a historic-cultural monument, the city “rendered the property useless,” the couple said.

The homeowners are asking the court to either allow them to proceed with their demolition plans or force the city to pay them the value of the home. Last September, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with city officials in blocking Milstein and Bank’s request to demolish the home.

— Chris Malone Méndez