Architect Less Than Flattered
Lawsuits contend that ex-employee used pilfered plans for real estate mogul's mansion. The case is expected to test copyright law.
September 18, 2003|Martha Groves, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
After three decades in real estate, mogul Fred C. Sands is finally building what he envisions as a one-of-a-kind dream mansion in Bel-Air.
It turns out the house might not be so one-of-a-kind after all.
In two lawsuits -- one filed in state court, the other in federal court this month -- architect William Hablinski alleges that a former employee plotted with a family of builder-developers to pilfer plans for the Sands house and use them to construct a remarkably similar Tuscan-style villa in Beverly Hills.
The suits brand it the Copycat House.
But for an accidental discovery, Hablinski -- who has designed custom manses for Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver -- might never have learned of the second house.
According to the complaints and interviews, two Hablinski employees -- Dave Hogan and Richard Giesbret -- in April happened to drive by a construction site on Marilyn Drive in Beverly Hills. Hogan commented on the fine detailing on a pediment piece over a doorway. The men decided to take a closer look.
"I looked at the whole facade and said, 'This is the Fred Sands house,' " Hogan said.
Stunned, the men ventured inside and found what they considered striking similarities to the Sands residence in the floor plan and within individual rooms, including the dining room, the media room, the library and the gym.
During their tour, a worker laid drawings for the house on the floor. The size of the sheets appeared to be identical to that of the plans for the Sands residence, which is now nearing completion seven miles to the west.
There were variations, to be sure, because the Beverly Hills lot was much smaller than Sands'. The garage wing, for example, was different, but Hogan said he realized later that it was just like a wing designed for a previous Hablinski project.
Then Hogan noticed that a logo and Web site for MSH Design appeared in the same place where the William Hablinski Architecture logo was positioned on the original Hablinski drawings. MSH Design is the firm of Mehran Shahverdi, who once worked for Hablinski.
The state suit, filed in June, names Shahverdi as the defendant and alleges, among other complaints, that he stole trade secrets. The federal suit, filed Sept. 5, names the builders and owners of the Beverly Hills property, along with two companies they own. It alleges copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition and other complaints.
Both suits seek unspecified damages.
The federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, aims to test the bounds of the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990, said Peter J. Bezek, Hablinski's attorney.
That law, designed to help bring the United States into compliance with the Bern Convention, an international copyright agreement, extended copyright protection to buildings. Previously, U.S. copyright code had protected architectural plans, but not buildings.
If either case goes to trial, jurors will be asked to compare not only the general appearances of the two houses, but also a variety of architectural features, from entablatures and pediments to fascia and architraves.
Unlike art, literature and, particularly, music -- which has spawned various lawsuits over illegal copying -- architecture is not about pure design, and that could complicate Hablinski's effort to win protection under the 1990 law, legal experts and architects said.
The lawsuits thus raise intriguing questions about what could be called architectural plagiarism.
"Architecture has a large functional component," said John Tehranian, a professor of intellectual property law and entertainment law at the University of Utah. "As a result, the courts are going to be very careful in terms of how far they grant architectural protection. You don't want someone to own the copyright on the door or the window. This would severely hamper the work of builders."
The issue is further muddied by the fact that architecture "is a profession that's based on borrowing," said Aleks Istanbullu, a Santa Monica architect who designs contemporary houses.
"Everybody builds on top of what others have built," Istanbullu said. "The copycat house is, at worse, the replica of a replica of a replica. Which generation of architects is it that was actually the copycat? They all were. It is a style that is being regurgitated over and over again, and Bill Hablinski has got the most recent claim to it.
"Under most circumstances, he would not have a leg to stand on," Istanbullu added. However, he acknowledged, if an employee stole plans and if that theft were sanctioned by others, that "is outrageous."
Shahverdi, through his attorney, denied all allegations in the state suit. An attorney for the individuals named in the federal lawsuit said he had not yet seen the suit and could not comment specifically on it, but he, too, denied any wrongdoing on the part of his clients.
Hablinski -- who said he prides himself on his expertise in historical architecture and his firm's attention to detail, with features drawn to one-sixteenth of an inch -- said he feels the case is tailor-made for setting an example for anyone who would filch an architect's ideas.
"It's very dismaying to have spent the better part of a year and a half developing a unique design for an important client and then go down the street one day and see this thing coming up like a mushroom," he said.
Two days after Hogan and Giesbret discovered the second house, Giesbret reviewed plans for the mansion at the Beverly Hills building department. One page contained the code name for the Sands residence, Unity Family Trust. Throughout the documents, the suits allege, statements appeared that mimicked those on the Hablinski plans.
Giesbret secured a copy of the owner-builder building permit, which listed Parviz Elihu as the applicant and Amir Construction, which had formerly employed Shahverdi, as the general contractor. Listed as owners of the house were Joseph Elihu and his wife, Hayadeh. Joseph and Parviz, who goes by Perry, are brothers.
According to the complaints, Joseph Elihu is president of EuroConcepts Inc., another company owned by him and his brothers. The suits say EuroConcepts had won the bidding to supply high-end kitchen and bathroom fixtures for the Sands house.
As a result, the Elihus (including two more brothers, Daniel and Albert) had access to the Sands residence and the architectural drawings, the suits say. The Elihu brothers and Hayadeh Elihu are named as defendants in the federal complaint, as are EuroConcepts and Amir Construction.
Perry and Daniel Elihu, interviewed at the Marilyn Drive site, said they were dismayed to hear of the dispute.
"We have not seen the [Hablinski] plans," Perry Elihu said. "We have no connection in any shape or form with that project. We commissioned [shahverdi] to do a house and he did it."
Daniel Elihu added that they were upset to learn that someone once had copied a building they constructed on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills.
"We pride ourselves on creating buildings that are as unique as possible," he said. "We did a project on Rexford and six months after a building went up on Rodeo that is exactly the same thing."
Shahverdi had started work at Hablinski's firm as a "job captain" in May 2000. His responsibilities included design development, research, manual drafting of plans and occasional travel to job sites. Among the projects to which he was assigned was the Sands residence.
Michael E. Fox, Shahverdi's attorney, said he has filed a petition with the state court, seeking to force Hablinski's firm to cease its lawsuit and to submit all claims against his client to private arbitration. A hearing on that request is scheduled for Monday. Nathan B. Hoffman, an attorney for the Elihus, said his clients, "to the best of their knowledge, never had anything that wasn't the product of engineers and designers whose work they had paid for."
Under the 1990 architectural copyright law, punishment for infringement is not limited to an offending architect. Even if builders were unaware that plans had been pirated, they could be subject to damages.
Sands is not a party to the suits. He declined to allow photographs of his 20,000-square-foot house in a leafy, gated community. But in an interview he acknowledged that he and his wife, Carla, were quite unsettled when Hablinski told them of the situation.
"My wife and I didn't sleep for three nights," Sands said. A prominent broker has put the value of his house at $20 million.
"After spending $500,000 for the architecture, for somebody to come along and knock off those plans is not comprehensible," Sands said. "I could see using this as your point of inspiration. But to have my wife's bathroom be the same and the molding in the dining room be the same and to have somebody put those renderings on their Web site is unbelievable.
"It's 90% my house," said Sands, who in 2000 sold his real estate firm to Coldwell Banker. "This kind of house, this caliber, is supposed to be one of a kind. It's like paying a couturier $25,000 for a dress. You don't expect to go to an event and see the same dress."
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/18/local/me-copycat18
