Real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley is suing Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for $150 million in compensation, including $100 million for “severe anguish and emotional distress”, because she says her late husband Harry’s family mausoleum has lost the views, serenity and solitude it once had. “Mrs. Helmsley’s complaint, first reported Monday in The New York Post, is that the ‘perpetual beauty’ and ‘peaceful solitude’ of the spot have been destroyed by the latest of many community mausoleums to be built at Woodlawn. But the view Mrs. Helmsley describes as forever lost is bleak: the access ramps to the Major Deegan Expressway, a traffic light at Jerome Avenue and 233rd Street, and locked gates where the cemetery’s grand entrance once was.” Woodlawn’s president says he has been unable to find any precedent for a lawsuit complaining of loss of views from a mausoleum. (Jane Gross, “Tomb Trouble: Nimby Strikes at Woodlawn”, New York Times, Jul. 29; “NY property tycoon sues cemetery”, BBC News, Jul. 27).
A tomb with a ($150M) view (of the Major Deegan)
Real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley is suing Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for $150 million in compensation, including $100 million for “severe anguish and emotional distress”, because she says her late husband Harry’s family mausoleum has lost the views, serenity and solitude it once had. “Mrs. Helmsley’s complaint, first reported Monday in The New York […]
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