SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (CN) - A porn production company accused of trashing a historic mansion in California while making a video denies the claim and says the property owner was on site during the shoot.
Kristina Knapic, owner of the Acacia Mansion in Ojai, sued Michael Lucas of Lucas Entertainment of Delaware in Santa Barbara County Superior Court on Nov. 18. She claims he rented the mansion, with alabaster floors and stained-glassed windows, under the guise of a person named "Anna" on vacation with friends. He then filmed porn scenes without permission and not only left a disgusting mess to clean up, but damaged the home's romantic reputation as well.
Michael Lucas and his crew were at the mansion for five days, Knapic says in the complaint. She claims that after they left, she entered her stately home to find "enema kits on the floors, in the beds, in [a] nightstand drawer and in the trash; various sexual devices were found in the beds and in the trash; the hot tub water was brownish in color; and the linens were stained brown."
After finding a business card in the trash, Knapic then found Lucas Entertainment's website and viewed videos of men urinating on each other and giving each other enemas "on beds, floors, and furniture," according to the complaint. She then photographed her home with a black light and "urine, semen and fecal matter were found on the linens, carpets, upholstery, walls, ceilings and in the hot tub."
In an email to Courthouse News, Lucas said Knapic was staying in a guest house on the property the entire time he and his crew were there.
"Our windows faced her windows, we shared the yard and garden, we shared laundry facilities. If there were any activity which would have resulted in the damage she now claims, it would have been evident," Lucas wrote.
Lucas also emailed images of phone text messages between himself and Knapic on Aug. 16. They purportedly show that Knapic's assistant did a walk-through with Lucas before he left and there were no issues at the time. In fact, his deposit was even returned.
In another text message sent nine days later, Lucas asked Knapic about some medication he left in the refrigerator. Knapic replied a week later, saying she had been in Cancun and - as to the medication - "Sorry my cleaning staff threw it away."
"Obviously, if the house was in the condition as described in her complaint, the response on Aug. 31 would have been something other than 'Sorry, my cleaning staff threw everything away,'" Lucas told Courthouse News.
In his email, Lucas pointed to two reviews of the Acacia Mansion on TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com, where guests had similar stories: that Knapic actually stayed in the house with them, everything seemed fine and then their deposit was withheld.
"My parents put a $1,000 deposit on this, it took them almost two months to get part of it back, she (Knapic) said the spa needed to be cleaned ... only one person used it for about 20 minutes," a Yelp reviewer wrote on July 28, 2014. According to her, housekeepers told her family they had never seen the place so spotless.
On TripAdvisor.com, another reviewer titled his review on Aug. 13, 2014, "Be Careful."
"Everyone had a great time, took good care of the place and left it cleaner than we found it," the reviewer wrote. "All memories were good until Kristina, the owner, retained our large security deposit for almost two months claiming that we had damaged several things during our stay.
"In spite of my repeated requests she refused to tell me what those damages were so that I could assess them for myself. Eventually she returned some of my deposit, retaining a large portion for repair and replacement of items, which as it turned out were in such a broken-down condition that they were already on their last legs."
As for Knapic's claim that Lucas' porn shoot damaged the mansion's romantic image, Lucas says the image is a myth.
"The house has a unique and unadvertised feature: a fairly well equipped sex dungeon in the basement, complete with a sex swing, whips, chains and miscellaneous bondage paraphernalia," Lucas wrote, adding that he and crew did not use the dungeon - but he did attach a video of the dungeon to prove its existence.
"If the house was trashed, it was trashed by someone other than us. It is possible that she or her renters had a sex party in the dungeon that got out of hand, and she is now looking to a porn company to fund the repairs," he continued. "In my opinion, this woman is a professional extortionist, and that's clear from the reviews she has received. It's also an obvious contradiction that she did not keep the security deposit, but now has decided to file a lawsuit."
Knapic's attorney, Lacy Taylor of the Law offices of John J. Thyne III, declined to comment on this story.
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