Trump Files Lawsuit against Southern California Town

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the city of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. The owner of the high-end public course, Trump National Golf Club - Los Angeles, has been wrangling with city officials ever since he acquired the property in 2002.

Trump's suit accuses the city - whose annual budget is just under $20 million - of fraud and civil rights violations, contending it was refusing to allow improvements needed to maintain the "Trump image," including a clubhouse terrace and a row of ficus trees he was forced to cut down earlier.

"I've been looking forward for a long time to do this," Trump told Los Angeles Times' reporter Victoria Kim of the legal action. "The town does everything possible to stymie everything I do."

Officials with the city of 46,000 reacted, as might be expected, with anger and frustration. They, along with other residents, believe that Trump's legal lawsuit is just another attempt to bully the community and circumvent the city's permit processes. Rancho Palos Verdes mayor Larry Clark dismissed the charges and said the lawsuit may cause residents' already simmering ill will toward the developer to explode.

"We have bent over backwards many, many times to work with Donald Trump," Clark told Kim, adding that he'd spoken with Trump about the lawsuit. "I'm sure this lawsuit is really going to anger a lot of the residents."

Among the irate citizens is 68-year-old Jo Ann Michetti, who e-mailed a city councilman last week urging him to "please continue not to give in to this bully."

"I think he just feels rules aren't made for him," said Michetti, a retired liability investigator who has lived in Rancho Palos Verdes since 1971. "He expects them to say he can do it because he's Donald Trump."

When Trump acquired the 300-acre golf course site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, residents believed him to be a savior of a golf development gone awry and someone with the clout to help the city get over a financial recession. The original Pete Dye-designed golf course was nearly completed when a massive landslide wiped out the 18th hole and forced the closure of the ninth and 12th holes.

The original developers, brothers Ken and Robert Zuckerman, spent $158 million developing the original course, a cost that forced them into bankruptcy. Trump bought the property at a deeply discounted $27 million, making it his first real estate venture on the West Coast. In all, upwards of $264 million were spent by the Zuckermans and Trump on the facility, which also contains an opulent 45,000-square-foot clubhouse.

"I took a piece of land that was lying fallow, tied up in courts for years and created the No. 1 course in California," Trump said of his resurrection of the facility, which hosted the LPGA Tour's Office Depot Championship in 2005.

But now Trump and the city have reached a loggerhead, due in part to instances like when the developer sued the local school district over the lease of a piece of land it owned in the golf course, and planting a row of tall ficus trees to block from view homes he deemed unsightly.

Attorney Stuart Miller said the city was unfairly holding Trump to higher standards and more stringent regulations than other developers and business owners. Trump has accused the city of trying to prolong his projects to extract fees, when, as he sees it, the town should be grateful for his investments.

No trial dates have been set.