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Mark Zuckerberg 'Reconsidering' Lawsuits To Force Property Sales in Hawaii (cnbc.com)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is "reconsidering" a set of lawsuits that he recently filed to compel hundreds of Hawaiians to sell him small plots of land they own that lie within the boundaries of 700-acre beachfront property on the island of Kauai. From a report on CNBC: The billionaire's potential about-face came after widespread publicity last week about the suits, which target a dozen plots comprising slightly more than eight acres of land strewn throughout the acreage that Zuckerberg bought for $100 million two years ago. Currently, owners of the lots, which have been in their families for generations, have the rights to travel across Zuckerberg's property. But many of the owners likely are unaware of their ownership interest in the plots. Last week, Zuckerberg said, "For most of these folks, they will now receive money for something they never even knew they had. No one will be forced off the land."
I care deeply about this because it's about someone wealthy from some social "platform"'s VC and stock-inflation value that decided to force natives out of their lands just because he has the money to do it. It proves he really hate everyone that isn't him, and uses everyone for his own personal gain.
If their properties is surrounded by Zuckerberg's property, why not offer them a swap? Offer them part of the outer part of his property for theirs, same size, same quality (or of course money if they prefer). That feels like sensible way to solve this without being evil.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Maybe, the angle is, Zuckerberg is among the Trump-haters? In particular, he is opposed to Trump's efforts to regain control of immigration:
His stated desire for ever more immigrants (like myself) to come here to live next to you and me seems at odds with his manifested desire to live away from the "unwashed" masses... And hypocrisy — or even appearance of hypocrisy — is always newsworthy.
Because Facebook?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Bullshit conjecture. That rarely happens in Hawaii. A lot of the owners tried to contact Zuckerberg and his lawyers to settle the issue long before the lawsuits happened. Both him and his lawyers ignored them entirely until after the lawsuits were filed and the press got a hold of it.
I have been down this road myself. I wanted to purchase a house but it was "land locked". I was doing my due diligence and having title searches and plat maps pulled before buying the property (something Zuck probably should have done more carefully).
The only access to the property and a number of other properties was via a private road. Nobody could find a plat map that showed clear ownership of the road. All anybody could figure out is neither the county nor the state acknowledged ownership. The residence of the near by properties all told me they had be using since the original developer subdivided it. I got a lawyer who went thru all the details and the determination they made was that its probably the case that years of use by the other residence has created an implied easement allowing use of the road, however without an express easement form an established title holder this could always be challenged. While such a challenge would almost certainly not succeed you'd have to litigate it, if the owner appeared and pushed the matter.
Now where this became a problem (and by creating knowledge of the issue I kinda screwed the current owners and their neighbors) is that nobody wanting to finance the place would be able to get a mortgage. Which of course drastically reduced the pool of potential buyers if you ever want to sell the property. Now the property had transacted several time in the previous decades but nobody had done a through title work. Reduced pool of buyers means reduced value. I did not want to buy a property I potentially could not sell if I wanted or needed to move in the future. So I stated the title had be represented as clear but was in fact impaired (land locked) and used that to escape the contract without being in breach.
The alternative to breaking the contract would have been to find the current property owner. They way my lawyer said we would have to go about that is basically to sue advertise for six months a basically sue a john doe for ownership or try and convince the county they should pursue the john doe owner for back taxes and than cease the property for nonpayment, this was also going to be filing so kind of legal writ, but I forget the term. It was going to cost tens of thousands so I opted not to go that route.
Anyway I thought I would share the anecdote because I know a bunch of people want to dump on Zuck here but these types of lawsuits are exactly what you do when the owner cannot be identified. The alternative is what nobody can ever do anything with the land ever? Some owner should be able to doge taxation on the property by simply being hard to find?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Modding PP offtopic? Seriously?
> You might not actually have a right to know who has an interest in any property you want to acquire.
When property is abandoned, its ownership reverts to The State in pretty much every jurisdiction. AFAIK, you cannot own land in the US without publicly listing the owner of the land. The owner need not be a person -it can be a front company whose purpose is to shield your identity- but the owner _must_ be publicly known.
The purpose of Zuck's legal action is to determine which (if any) of the pieces of property that his encloses are abandoned or not. Those that are, he'll attempt to purchase it from The State. Those that are not, he'll attempt to purchase it through the owner, whoever that may be.