Man tries to get back Berlin Wall pieces

TAMPA, Fla., Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A Florida man has filed a lawsuit, claiming his daughter sold his collection of pieces of the Berlin Wall without his permission.

The Outdoor Arts Foundation acquired the pieces last year from a seller who had bought them from Elizabeth Glass of Plant City, Fla., the Tampa Tribune reported. Her father, Warren McFadden of Tampa, said he did not authorize the sale and only learned of it from a newspaper advertisement.

McFadden is seeking an injunction to block the foundation from selling or transferring the pieces until the question of ownership is decided.

The foundation plans to incorporate pieces of the wall into monuments commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall in all U.S. states except Alaska and Hawaii. The project is scheduled to be completed by the historic event's 20th anniversary in 2009.

The wall, which separated the East and West German sections of Berlin, was erected in the 1960s. It was torn down in one of the first major signs of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe.

McFadden says he bought the pieces in a bankruptcy sale not long after the wall's destruction.