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Zuckerberg Sues Hundreds of Hawaiians To Force Property Sales To Him (msn.com)
mmell writes: Apparently, owning 700 acres of land in Hawaii isn't enough -- Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has filed suit to force owners of several small parcels of land to sell to the highest bidder. The reason? These property owners are completely surrounded by Zuckerberg's land holdings and therefore have lawful easement to cross his property in order to get to theirs. Many of these land owners have held their land for generations, but seemingly Mr. Zuckerberg can not tolerate their presence so close to his private little slice of paradise. Landowners such as these came to own their land when their ancestors were "given" the land as Hawaiian natives. If successful in his "quiet title" court action, Mr. Zuckerberg will finally have his slice of Hawaii's beaches and tropical lands without having to deal with the pesky presence of neighbors who were on his land before he owned it. Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans? CNBC reports: "The cases target a dozen small plots of so-called 'kuleana' lands that are inside the much larger property that Zuckerberg bought on Kauai. Kuleana lands are properties that were granted to native Hawaiians in the mid-1800. One suit, according to the Star-Advertiser, was filed against about 300 people who are descendants of an immigrant Portuguese sugar cane plantation worker who bought four parcels totaling two acres of land in 1894. One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."
Whats German for "cocksucker". THAT should be his last name.
Who else is going to bid for land that's surrounded entirely by someone else's land, and subject to these kinds of legal encumbrances?
The man is a bastard and a prime candidate for an urgent visit from a large group of people toting pitchforks and torches, if anyone can find any in present-day Hawaii.
From TFA, it seems like these are old titles, many of the people who inherited them have no idea they "own" these properties, and thus haven't been paying property taxes on them since 180something.
I don't much care for The Zuck, but before taking off on the all too predictable partisan political tears, people should inform themselves on which Supreme Court justices ruled which way on the Kelo decision.
What is it about having money that turns people into such assholes?
I mean really, 700 acres? How can someone not find sufficient privacy for their family on 700 acres, even if it contains a few parcels he doesn't own?
Although I'm not a Zuckerberg fan, the headline is a little misleading. Apparently for most of these parcels, the actual ownership is unclear-- the ownership is split sometimes among hundreds of descendants of the original owners, and in some cases it's not clear who owns it, or if they're even alive or if they're not, who the heirs are. This seems to be the only way to clear title to the land.
I wish I owned an acre of land right in the middle of where he wants to build his house. I'd put a big barbed-wire fence around it, park the biggest, ugliest, smelliest old trailer I could find on it, demand continued access rights and refuse to sell at any money.
If you read the article, these are parcels of land that no one lives on, but more than one people *own*. What his case is doing is forcing the land to be sold so that those owners can come forward and get paid for it. Most owners don't even realize they own the land.
So no one is being *forced out of their homes*. Basically they are getting money they didn't realize they had.
You're not reading TFA correctly, because if they have " no idea " they own them then obviously they aren't crossing his property to visit property they don't care about.
Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans?
Apparently everyone but the author. What a moron.
People have been saying it for years, but I really feel like this place isn't what it used to be. Here we have a terrible, click-baity headline followed by a terrible, lazily editorialized summary, none of which is "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters."
Really, does this impact us in some way that I'm not seeing? At least with stories about Steve Jobs's megayacht, there was a cool megayacht to be interested in.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Go fuck yourself.
If I could do that I wouldn't bother messing about here on Slashdot.
Thou shalt not covenant thy Zuckerbergs land.
I don't have high expectations for the quality of the content on Slashdot, but this summary is particularly bad.
Regardless of what your stance is on this matter, the fact remains that the summary is highly biased and editorialized, to the point of the entire submission being rubbish.
Crap like
and
and
and especially
should have all been removed, and doing so would have made the submission far more informative and objective.
The "Who knew ... just another kind of Native Americans?" junk is particularly stupid. The people called "Native Americans" today are just the descendants (ignoring how many of them are also descended from Europeans, sometimes proportionally more so than from non-Europeans) of the most recent waves of migration to the Americas from Eurasia. It's rarely mentioned how these later waves likely destroyed previous cultures in the Americas, such as the Clovis people, because that wouldn't fit with the leftist narrative of today's "Native Americans" being perpetual victims.
The editors should have seriously reworked this submission's summary. Perhaps it would have been better just to throw it out completely, it's so inherently bad.
This summary and all of its obvious bias just makes those against Zuckerberg's actions look like kooks and extremists.
Referring to Zuckerberg as "Him" makes the title of the article sound like he's being deified.
Zuckerfuck is playing with fire... Literally fire and lava..
One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."
Someone got paid to betray his kin and I bet it was big enough to matter.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
sheesh! what is zuckerburg trying to do? start his own country? even if i was a billionaire i would not want more than maybe 1 square mile, heck i could find plenty of privacy in 20 acres of back wood land in rural montana or wyoming, build a nice warm mansion that looks like a GIANT log cabin in where it cant be seen from the nearby roads, and put up a chainlink fence around it topped with razor wire, and motion detectors & security cams
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If Hawaiians let us build our Thirty Meter Telescope, we will agree to cement Mark Zuckerberg into the foundation thereof.
Or were purposfully holding on to because land in Hawaii is an investment that will never lose the value paid for it (free in most cases if taxes aren't included.)
This is a land grab by a billionare at its purest. Think you're an equal citizen? Just try fighting the lawsuit.
It is clear that Suckerbern doesn't own it
It is not the number that is bad, if he sued a single person to force them off of their ancestral land, then their is no punishment too hefty for him.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You might think so... I thought so, too, a couple decades ago when the broker handling my 401k touted some investment scheme involving land prices in Hawaii never losing value. I lost about ten grand on that one.
I would assume that for this to have any meaning, the owners can't set any sort of minimum beyond what the assessed value of the property is. Otherwise you could say you will sell for a trillon dollars and call it a day when he can't pay the asking price.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
most of the really cool stuff that exists at the level a /.tter can understand has come and gone. So we get crap like this to fill space. This isn't the 90s anymore when cool tech was coming non-stop or the 2000s when you could just run tech layoff articles nonstop...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Not so much refuse to pay as aren't aware they owe taxes on properties they weren't aware they owned.
the county is likely within its power to seize the plots
I don't know how Hawaiian law works. But in my state (WA), unclaimed property is protected forever. Counties (and other parties) might be able to file a lien for fees, taxes and other obligations owed. But I don't think they can just 'take it away'.
and sell them to cover the costs
What costs? For unimproved land with no services, the cost to the county is zero. Even then, once the property owner is identified, they have the right (at least in my state) to make good on back taxes and fees.
Have gnu, will travel.
The easement shall be a tunnel 100 feet underground. It will have 2 elevators on each end to take them to the tunnel and back up. The land above the easement shall remain untouched and undisturbed. Any violation of the land above the tunnel will revoke the land ownership of the person who tried to create the easement.
Zuckerberg is a scumbag. That is all.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
As someone else said, Zuck's always been an asshole, long before he had money. In this case, the headline is utter bull, Zuck's doing something else assholish today, but the legal proceeding isn't what the headline claims.
As the article says, there are four half-acre parcels, owned by more than 300 descendants of the people who lived there 150 years ago. That is, each little parcel has about 80 owners, several of unknown whereabouts.
There's no chance anybody is going to track down all 300 descendants and get them to all agree on *anything* - selling or anything else. So the land sits there, of no use to anyone. The legal filing allows Zuck to pay the 300+ descendants for land they probably didn't know they had any ownership interest in, and weren't making any use of.
Why does it matter to him? It doesn't matter much, but consider if you owned a big house, but someone else owned the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and had the right to come in to the house to get to their medicine cabinet. That of course affects resale value, and it's just weird.
Parkinson's?
The lawsuit(s) being filed are to determine ownership of the parcels of land. Not to force the sale of the land.
Zuckerberg is suing to find out who owns the land so that he can negotiate to purchase the land from them. Right now he can't purchase the land because no one knows who owns it.
He is not suing to force the sale, he is suing to make the sale possible.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
I don't much care for The Zuck, but before taking off on the all too predictable partisan political tears
I know the GOP lately doesn't seem to stand for anything but billionaires, but I don't think zuckerberg quite qualifies as a "partisan" issue yet...
Let's please not. The reason his last name means "sugar mountain" in German is because in the late 18th Century the various Germanic empires forced all Jews to have surnames, instead of being known as (e.g.) Yeshua ben Youssef -- a patronym, not a surname. If your family was on bad terms with the local magistrate then you might have had a surname that was actually insulting rather than merely ridiculous. So unless you're interested in reviving a particularly vile brand of antisemitism, please let's not give this man an insulting surname, even if you think he deserves shame and ridicule.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Just think, he could solve the Palestinian problem
Clearly Zuckerberg has more right to this land that the native Hawaiians whose family have had rights to it for generations. After all, Zuckerberg is a Jew and in the book that the Jews wrote it clearly says that God will always side with the Jews over all others no matter what. This is called "The Covenant". Jews have a long history of taking the land that they want from other people who it belongs to. Not just the Palestine settlements where they kill the Palestinians who are living there and then "settle" the land, but even Israel itself back millennium ago when they murdered the Canaanites to take their land because "God gave it to the Jews" . Apparently this is how God works, he gives Jews something but he expects them to kill others including women and children to actually enforce his will.
Those Hawaiians better not piss of God by not letting a Jew have his way.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They have a lot of experience nuking tropical paradises, why not put their knowledge to good use finally? There's only one owner and if you time it just right, he'll be gone with the wind after the test...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not paying tax for years makes you forfeit your land?
Dibs on the Trump Tower!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's the plot of about a dozen A-Team episodes. Usually the asshole gets his ass handed in the end.
Why can't life follow TV a bit more?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He's a bit late, 80 years ago they would not only have given him a bit of land but also a decent job and protected him day and night.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He does behave a lot like a little kid who got a credit card without a limit for his birthday, doesn't he?
But that's pretty much what happens with people who never had to earn money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't really think we have to wait that long, there's already a sizable portion of the population that considers FB nothing less than the worst transgression of privacy since the fall of the iron curtain.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Are you high, dumb or willfully ignorant?
Honest question.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please go fuck yourself you spoiled little bitch....
Yes, we desperately needed a refresher on what an ass this guy is.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
IKR?
I mean, its not like we illegally overthrew a sovereign kingdom or anything.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The solution is simple: the city forces Zuckerberg to sell a small slice of his land. That slice would be used as a pathway by owners living inside the circle to enter and leave their properties without walking on Zuckerberg's land. Case closed.
FTFS:
These property owners are completely surrounded by Zuckerberg's land holdings and therefore have lawful easement to cross his property in order to get to theirs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You have described what already exists. An Easement is exactly the same thing.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
From the article, this is exactly why this process is used,. By filing they have to notify the owners (most of whom have no idea they own anything) and then they get a chance to settle up (if in arrears) and sell before the government just seizes the land and auctions it off.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
He followed standard Hawaiian procedure for identifying land owners of essentially abandoned properties. The suit requires the owners to be identified and served before any actions are taken and if they choose to they can simply ensure all property taxes are up to date (or make arrangements) and then continue using/not using the land as they desire.
Zuckerberg isn't forcing anyone off their land; most of the owners don't even know it exists but after this they will and can possibly make a few dollar off of it.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
The county has to serve notice to the owner plus any existing lien holder before putting the property up for auction. RCW 84.64.050.
Have gnu, will travel.
He made a standard court filing to identify the owners of the few parcels of land that are completely surrounded by his property so that they can choose whether they want to pay any back taxes and continue to own the land, sell to him (or someone else they choose) or officially abandon the land to the State. Apparently some of these half acre plots can have hundred of owners, most of whom have no idea they even own the property, so no one bothers to do anything with them.
From the article it appears only one even had a resident, who left a few years back, and he's actually supporting Zuckerberg's filing so that all the owners can be properly identified and paid.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
A crook who created something as crappy as fb can only be a mean person. I say expel the crook from Hawaii and expropriate whatever he bought there.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?