The article says Khosla doesn't even live there. As someone else in this thread pointed out, his whole motivation for doing this is probably just to get the state to buy the disputed part of the property from him for millions of dollars. Comparing this to someone breaking in to your your house is ridiculous.
California courts have ruled it not his property several times. Despite mounting throwing never ending $$ to stall in court and mounting ridiculous legal theories of literally citing Pirate Law from the 1700s, he keeps losing again and again. It's a public beach, it's always been a public beach. It wasn't like it was a secret when he bought the property, he just thought he was special and smart enough and rich enough to get his way.
This isn't about big evil government encroaching on property rights. It's keeping land that was already public land public. If you owned a house and I bought up all the property around your house and then put a gate across and locked your driveway, you'd still own and have legal access to your house. That's what Kholsa is trying to do.
> He does not need to live there to want to protect his property.
Did you read the article? It is not his property, it is public access to a public beach. He deserves compensation for losing in court and continue to break the law with which the court upheld? I'm confused, did we read the same article?
"So the coastal commission tried to broker a compromise, chief of enforcement Lisa Haage said. Officials offered to consider moving the access road, to find a nonprofit to operate the entry and to close on rainy days when the beach was muddy. But the talks went nowhere."
If it was clear cut, why is the Chief of Enforcement accommodating alternatives?
She's not trying to crush him. Her goal is to provide access to the beach--which these solutions would. It would obviously be great if he just went along with the legal requirements, but moving the road or getting a non-profit to operate a gate is better than a protracted court battle, and it wouldn't hurt if everyone ended up happy at the end.
Resolving the dispute in a way that everyone is happy with may reinforce bad behavior in that you can get away with closing the path for N years; but at the end of the day, if there is equivalent access to the beach with the old path and a new path that the landowner is happier with, the public still has the same access going forward as they did before, and it likely would have been allowed if he had gone through permits.
So it also shows that in the end, even billionaires need to follow the law; and that its probably a better use of their time to work with the commission to find a good solution, instead of to fight the law.
> If it was clear cut, why is the Chief of Enforcement accommodating alternatives?
Because the Commission has finite resources and devoting them to dealing with a billionaire that's devoted to tying up the legal system as long as possible isn't efficient use of them if a compromise can be reached at far less cost in litigation and the remaining resources directed to other priorities.
The constitution does not guarantee access to OP's house, but it does for the beach. The courts have not ordered toomuchtodo to give the public access to his house.
Let's say your house abuts a public park, providing access to an area that's hard to reach from the public entrance. You let kids walk down your driveway and through your back yard to the park. You frequently sit on the porch and wave to them as they walk through. On busy days, you sell parking in your front yard to park-goers. One day, after 50 years, you decide you don't like those kids walking though your yard any more and you lock the gate. Or, to tailor the analogy more closely, the Simpsons' Mr. Burns buys your house and locks the gate.
If someone took you (or the new owner) to court to re-open the gate, you'd probably lose.
That's incorrect! Routine use of a path over your property over a large amount of time is a classic case where a public easement is created without the owner's consent. See "Prescriptive Easements"[1]. You absolutely will be required to re-open the path.
There was a post on /r/legaladvice where someone's neighbor sold a plot of land, causing them to effectively be landlocked, but there was a road through OP's land connected to the seller's property with a locked gate to which the seller was demanding access. Basically everyone was telling OP not to allow the seller access, even once, as that would set a precedent.
There is nothing unclear in this story. California's beaches are a public resource, as codified in the California constitution. Blocking access to public beaches is against the law, no matter how much property you own or how much money you have. Khosla is breaking the law, and a court has confirmed that.
Common law (still a thing in America) has the concept of an implied easement. If people have been relying on this path for the past century to gain access to the beach, then you can't just discontinue access.
When I was a child, my church owned a plot of land across the street from the main building. The land was vacant, and students from a nearby college used to cut across it to get to class. Once a year, church members would stand at the corners of the property to bar access to the pedestrians - so that the church could maintain that it had not ceded access to the path, in the event that the church wanted to make use of the lot at a later date.
Folks, half of this conversation is now so greyed out I can't even properly read it. Regardless of whether you agree or not - please stop downvoting. A person's asking legitimate questions. Don't silence the questions. Don't punish people who just talk within the discourse.
There's no one being attacked here. No one's being objectionally rude. It's just an exchange of ideas and viewpoints. Let those be.
You're arguing opinions as facts and making me debate semantics. I don't agree that this was trolling by the least.
Also – since these are just opinions, they are worth equally much. The truth isn't something you or anyone else owns. And what do you mean, 'deserves.'
This isn't trolling. This person is arguing, is what I think. Arguing civilly which is what this is, should be possible out here in the boonies (whith which I mean HN, in the most amical way).
I question the sincerity of their arguments. The same person posted at least one ridiculous nonsequitur (about guns), quoted the same passage several times in several places with demonstrably incorrect explanation of its meaning (even after being corrected about what California law says about the subject, with references), made silly analogies about living rooms, and all around pulled a Gish Gallop spread across a couple dozen comments.
If a "civil" argument is designed to mislead and intended to make the conversation incomprehensible, can it be anything other than a troll? This is a trolling tactic and has been forever. Look up "forum sliding", for another fun explanation of one of the tactics hyperliner is using.
If he didn't keep posting and reposting the same blurb about whomever is representing the defendant, I might more reasonably consider his point of view. Until then, I'm really considering him just to be trolling.
The only greyed out posts I see aren't worth reading anyway. Mostly just ignoring anyone that makes points to counter their arguments, it's like having a conversation with our President.
