Games Lawyers Play With History In Los Angeles
ForbesWoman Investing Leadership Lifestyle Personal Finance Real Estate Abel Stearns Arcadia Bandini direct descendant homeless veterans lawyer games lawyers Los Angeles Santa Monica standing VA Veterans Administration
William P. Barrett
They call someone a 'direct descendant' of a person who died childless.
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Forbes
Represented by no fewer than 15 lawyers, including some big names, advocates of homeless veterans this week sued officials of the Veterans Administration in Los Angeles federal court. The 72-page complaint said the agency erred in renting out much of a now-valuable half-square-mile of land given the Federal Government more than a century ago to house and treat disabled soldiers in Southern California.

Among the members of this latest legal dream team are Laurence H. Tribe, the well-known Harvard law professor; Ronald L. Olson, a name partner in a major Los Angeles law firm, professors at the well-regarded UCLA School of Law and lawyers working for the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Their plaintiff clients include four homeless veterans and Santa Monica resident Carolina Winston Barrie. The lawsuit formally describes her as a "direct descendant" of Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker. A historic figure, de Baker co-signed the deed in 1888 covering three-quarters of the parcel for construction of a "national home for disabled volunteer soldiers."

But there's a problem with this stated genealogy filed with the court. As is well known to devotees of Los Angeles history, the twice-widowed Senora de Baker died in 1912 never having had any children. So by common definition she could not have had a "direct descendant," just as there never have been direct descendants of, say, the childless George Washington.

Plaintiff Barrie long has been an outspoken advocate for veterans and a revised use of the property. Her inclusion as a plaintiff certainly added an interesting historic and public relations element. And if she were a direct descendant, she even might provide the plaintiff lawyers with added legal standing under real estate law to attack the original deed as a "charitable trust" not being adequately fulfilled.

Forbes emailed all 15 plaintiff lawyers asking about the factual and legal basis for their assertion that Barrie is a "direct descendant." One of the 15, ACLU lawyer David Sapp, admitted in an email that Baker had no children. "We do not mean that Ms. Barrie is the child of a child of a child, etc. of Ms. Baker," he wrote, "but that she is directly descended from individuals who were determined to be the heirs."

Barrie herself readily acknowledged in an interview with Forbes that she is no direct descendant of de Baker. Rather, she said she is the great-grandchild of one of de Baker's sisters, meaning de Baker was her great-great aunt. But she dismissed the lawsuit's enhanced view of her lineage as "a small matter of semantics."

The 387 acres in question on the west side of Los Angeles adjoins Interstate 405 at Wilshire Boulevard near the swank Brentwood neighborhood and is some of the most expensive terra firma in the country. There are VA facilities on both the spread and abutting parcels. But the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, alleges the VA rents out much of the holding to outfits like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, a charter bus company, a hotel laundry plant, and a private school, and doesn't do enough for ailing veterans. The VA says it's studying the litigation but in the past has asserted the lease income helps fund services to veterans.

Whatever its merits, the lawsuit recalls a fascinating figure in California history. Arcadia Bandini was born in 1827 in San Diego to Juan Bandini, a prominent San Diego official who played a key role in agitating against the far-away Spanish-speaking rulers of California before the United States marched in and wrenched control from Mexico in 1846.

Lauded along with her sisters for beauty and charm, Arcadia (pronounced are-CAH-dee-ah) married extremely well. In 1841, her first husband was Abel Stearns, a Massachusetts native who was a business and political associate of her father. The age gap between Arcadia and Stearns was so large--he was 43, she was 14--that Stearns, fearing ridicule, convinced priests to dispense with advance notice of their wedding. Stearns went on to become Southern California's largest landowner and the richest citizen of Los Angeles.

He died in 1871. Three years later, Arcadia married again--to another real estate tycoon with New England roots, Robert S. Baker of Rhode Island. Among other holdings, he owned the two Mexican land grants covering most of the future upscale seaside city of Santa Monica, just west of the VA land. Baker is considered a co-founder of the city. Arcadia had her own real estate holdings, including the parcel she co-owned with U.S. Senator John P. Jones that she deeded for soldiers in 1888.

Baker's 1894 death again made Arcadia a widow--a much more wealthy widow. She continued to live in grand style in the Los Angeles area. At the time of her death in 1912 at age 85 she was one of California's richest women (and buried at Los Angeles' Calvary Cemetery between the two husbands who helped make her so). Her estate was valued at $7 million--about $150 million in today's dollars.

But the fact she died without a will and without children or other "direct descendants" led to prolonged litigation over her estate by 42 distant relatives of Stearns from New England. A Los Angeles judge ruled against them, saying whatever inheritance rights they might have had ended when Arcadia married Baker. In 1914, on the eve of a California Supreme Court appeal, the New England claimants agreed to settle for 10% and go away. The rest of the estate went--after lawyer fees, of course--to relatives of Arcadia.