The owner of the L.A. Grand Hotel Downtown is seeking dismissal of parts of a lawsuit brought by one of its lessees whose owners were critical of its temporary conversion into a homeless shelter, but the plaintiffs say the fight is not just an “ordinary commercial lease dispute.”
The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit was filed by the nonprofit Academy of Media Arts against Sun & Sky I LLC as well as other defendants. The academy leased floors of the hotel and alleges that the building’s former participation in the city of Los Angeles’ Project Roomkey program violated the plaintiff’s lease because students were subjected to trash, assaults, hypodermic needles, violence and safety threats. The hotel has not been used as a homeless shelter since July 2024.
Project Roomkey was a coordinated effort to secure hotel and motel rooms in Los Angeles County as temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness who were had a high potential for hospitalization if they contracted the coronavirus.
But in court papers filed March 6 with Judge Thomas D. Long in advance of an April 2 hearing, defense attorneys maintain that only the academy’s breach of contract suit should proceed to trial. The lawyers contend that the negligence and the intentional interference with prospective economic advantage and with contractual relations allegations should be dismissed because they overlap with the breach-of-contract allegation.
“Thus, the court now should dismiss these tacked-on interference claims without leave to amend,” the Sun & Sky attorneys state in their court papers.
But in their opposition to the hotel owner’s motion, the plaintiff’s attorneys contend that the harm to their clients after the hotel was opened to Project Roomkey was “immediate and concrete” and that students complained of fear and discomfort. ;Families withdrew or declined enrollment and the academy suffered reputational harm, disruption costs, staffing burdens, regulatory exposure and operational instability, according to the school’s lawyers pleadings.
The Sun & Sky motion improperly asks the court to reduce a school-safety and property-management case to an “ordinary commercial lease dispute,” according to the academy’s attorneys’ court papers.
The academy provides a pathway to college and career opportunities for those in disadvantaged areas. The academy’s founder and director, Dana Hammond, was a 9-year-old caregiver while his mother battled drug addiction. After entering into its lease agreement, the academy grew its enrollment and graduated 98% of its founding senior class, each of whom went on to four-year universities, the suit filed in January 2024 states.