Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

That’s not what the cert petition is about. The government didn’t just force Khosla to allow people to use the easement:

> To be clear, all agree that petitioner owns the property in fee simple absolute. But the Coastal Commission and the County nonetheless declared the power not only to mandate that the property be kept open to the public unless petitioner obtains a permit to close it, but to dictate essential aspects of how petitioner must invite the public onto its private property—including the hours it must allow access, the absurdly low price ($2) it may charge, and even the extent of advertising alerting the public of its ability to access petitioner’s private property for a pittance.

View on HN

Why should there be any limitation on hours, or any fee for access? It’s a public easement to allow access to public property, and it predates his ownership by decades. And night time visits to the beach are awesome.

He bought an asset, and is now trying to take value from the public to increase his own enjoyment of the asset and the value of that asset. An essentially private beach in California, and enforced by Supreme Court decision would be pretty cool, and insanely valuable.

He should have no control over the access and should be liable for any attempt he makes to hinder or hide access.

I’d totally make regular visits if I lived in the area.

Unless he's just completely making things up, the previous owners had limitations and charged a fee.

And the county regulations do allow him to do that, if he chooses, but he doesn’t want to - he closed the gate and wants to keep it closed.

That isn’t legal, as determined by the trial court, the appeals court, and the CA Supreme Court.

Its not just a trail through the private property to the mean high tide line. Its a whole sandy beach, an access road, restrooms, etc. And it was always demarcated as private property—the previous owners operated it as a business.

That’s why the case isn’t just about an easement. The county wants Khosla to keep operating it as a beach, not just to let people get to the water.

Any documents from the county to that effect?

I didn’t find anything that said the county wouldn’t let him just open the access.

I found lots of references that said people used to have reasonable to access the beach, but he bought the property and locked the gate.

The opinion starts at page 50 of this pdf: https://d3583ivmhhw2le.cloudfront.net/images/uploads/publica...

The agency forced him to not only allow access down the road, but keep running the existing parking lot. Nobody disputes the parking lot is private.

No, that's the order of the trial court saying he has to open the gate (and the appeals court affirming that ruling). The court is saying, "There is an established process to administer the law - you can't unilaterally decide to close the gate. Open it back up!"

From that same document and everything else I've seen, he hasn't even applied for the permit to close it. If he applies, and if he's denied, then he can assert that allowing public access is a "taking" of his property rights, rather than just protecting the public's right of access.

But he has to apply for the permit before the commission can decide to allow or forbid it.

Rayiner asserts it is "the agency" that is forcing opening, but it is not (or had not been). The opinion at page 50 of the PDF is in the case "SURFRIDER FOUNDATION v. MARTINS BEACH 1, LLC et al." - It's a concerned citizen group filing suit against one of the two LLCs that purchased parts of the property, and the courts agreeing that Khosla must re-open the gate he locked.

"[Surfrider has] kept it real simple,...It’s always been ‘Mr. Khosla, do you have a permit for that gate or don’t you?’”

In September, after this decision, the commission began an enforcement action, which could cost Khosla over $4 million per year, and Khosla opened the gate, in addition to filing his appeals. http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20171004/NEWS/17...

This is an interesting point. But it really just points how silly it is to only make a beach public up to the high tide line. The public doesn't generally know where that line is anyway. Either they are allowed to use the beach or not... doubt anyone coming in by boat will check the high tide line and not stretch their towel out over the sandy beach.

It's also not an absurdly low price considering it only allows access to a public area.

High tide lines aren't a theoretical line but leave an actual physical line of flotsam. He's also free to leave markers for the line and prevent people from going past the high tide line

The physical line of flotsam is not the legal "mean high tide line".

"In most states, all land below the mean high tide line belongs to the state and citizens have the right to unrestricted access to that land. Intuition would indicate that this “line” is where the sand changes from wet to dry during high tide. This, however, is not always the case. The mean high tide line is actually the arithmetic average of high-water heights observed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) over an 18.6-year Metonic cycle. It is the line that is formed by the intersection of the tidal plane of the mean high tide with the shore. It is not an easy line to determine, and it is an even harder one to see. From standing on the beach watching the waves, there is no way of knowing exactly where the mean high tide line falls, or where public land begins and ends, making enforcement a difficult and controversial task. "

http://www.beachapedia.org/Beach_Access (From Surfrider, a party to the lawsuits)

If the beach is open to the public, the likelihood that people will respect the markers seems very low. This is a good example of a law that is generally unenforceable unless he hires people to watch.

You could imagine a different rule. But the mean high tide rule traces back to Roman law, and we got it by way of the Magna Carta. Too late to change it now without compensating all those property owners who own the beaches.

There's a lot of court cases about how making something absurdly expensive is the same as not allowing something.

The rules exist because otherwise people act in bad faith

That makes sense though. Imagine it cost $1000 to visit the beach, opened only 4a-5a and had no clear signage. That's pretty useless. The requirements should be clear.

You have just provided more info than that entire Bloomberg article. Thank you.

If this is the case, then my sympathies have switched to Khosla.

If there is no dispute about the existence of the easement then this case could be closed immediately and people would have access to the beach.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com