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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, high king of the Social Network, hereby decree that I have more money than thou! With this money comes great responsibility and power and the desire to own 700 acres of beachfront property in one of the most beautiful parts of the world! Unfortunately, many of you lowly peons also own bits and pieces of the property and because I am a just, and OCD, king, I must have ALL of the lands with no filthy natives scurrying across my property to access their own, so I shall be generous. Fight my lawsuits and I will bankrupt you. Accept my offers or you shall find yourself the poorer. I am king, I hereby decree it.
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.
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.
These are deeds from the 1800s. There may be no "someone else" involved! That is actually the point of the lawsuit; To find the owners!
This is just click bait to bash Zuckerberg. He isn't suing to force people to sell.
Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them.
No one has been paying property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to:
1) find out who owns the land
2) collect the property taxes or auction the land to pay the taxes
3) if the land is auctioned to pay any money over the owed taxes to the owners of the land
To complicate things the land was bought by Portuguese workers (not native Hawaiians) 4 or 5 generations ago. So each of these plots could now have over 100 owners.
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.
From what I understand, only one person has been found so far and he's a professor that was willing to sell. We're talking 8 acres out of 700 and most of those 300 people who share it don't even know they own the land. He's not forcing anyone off any land. The lawsuit is to give people who might have ownership rights time to step forward and otherwise assume that they are all dead and proceed. This is standard procedure in hawaii. He's not doing anything that anyone else who buys land in hawaii doesn't have to do and what exactly are 300 people going to do with 8 acres. I'm sure Zuckerberg would be more than willing to give them the choice of any 8 acres on the edge of his tract if they really want it. This is all just propaganda to make him look like an evil rich guy.
Obviously you don't care that much about it because otherwise you would have read a bit about the story and realized the story is complete click bait. Zuckerberg isn't suing to force people to sell. Zuckerberg doesn't even know who the people are. They don't know who they are! There are 8 acres of land inside his land. He owes these people the right to cross his land and if he builds on his land something like a fence he has to consult with them. These owners owe property taxes on the land. He is asking the local government to find the people who own the land and tell them they own the land. If the owners decide they don't want the land (very likely) then the land will be sold and if it is sold for more than the back taxes the owners might get some money.
Where is the angle that distinguishes this from any other rich-person-behaving-badly story, and warrants inclusion on Slashdot?
Probably the fact Zuckerberg is probably the single most vile person currently alive. He created a fortune by stealing a product from some people he claimed to be developing for them while getting paid to do so, then he leveraged said platform to spy on his own countrymen, then he adjusted said platform to fit the fascist policies of every nation he felt he could get a hand into, while continuing to sell out. His entire scheme is comprised of suckering people into giving him information on themselves, their friends and their families to hand over to governments around the world for nefarious purposes while manipulating the community both online and off for his own sociopathically-derived sociological experiments. The fact he's now actively oppressing several hundred people wouldn't even be worth a footnote in his long list of crimes against Humanity, save for the fact that he also leverages a perception of social justice to claim the moral highground in all his misdeeds, demonstrating exactly what he and those like him at the top consider social justice to be - a tool to control morons. He has extreme influence over the direction of technology and in turn his misdeeds are of extreme interest to nerds - who make their livelihoods and hobbies out of the things he and those like him are corrupting.
If you believe in property rights, then those 8 acres are 8 acres and it doesn't matter who the neighbors are, the neighbors don't own those 8 acres and can't pretend they do and close off access. End of issue.
Also, if you don't know who has interest in a property, that's fine. You might not actually have a right to know who has an interest in any property you want to acquire. If it is information you might simply not have access to, then there is no argument that they don't exist or in fact don't have an interest. In that case it just is their own business and their own land and piss off, right?
If you want to buy a private area to close off, my advice is to find one that is for sale, instead of a bunch of smaller plots next to each other with other plots in between that are not for sale. Seems obvious to me.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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?
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