Silicon Valley Billionaire Battles Surfers Over Beach Access
blogs.kqed.org
blogs.kqed.org
Property rights recap at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6917815
tl;dr: The property was granted to the original owner by the government of Mexico before California was part of the US. The property rights were preserved by the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. California's right of access to the shoreline does not override the pre-existing property right.
Welcome to the Southwest, and if you think this is strange, try exploring seniority of water rights.
Don't like the situation? Write your congress-critters and legislators, or take it to court. Other members of the tech community might respond, but are unlikely to have enough leverage to secure access to that beach. No, I don't like it either.
In the UK, which has a long and sometimes poorly recorded legal history, there are procedures for this sort of thing. If land has some unusual legal status conferred on it by a 500 year old law, the government can simply pass a law saying "not any more it doesn't" and the unusual legal status is removed.
I dread to think how complicated land ownership would end up after multiple hundreds or thousands of years if there were no way to change or update the laws made by our long-dead ancestors.
Sure, it could be changed, California is a big powerful state, but their representatives are busy people, and i'm sure billionaires can donate a few thousand dollars to ensure the issue never really comes up at the federal level.
Nebraska for a while had a allodial title system up until 2005. Yeah you could basically pay a huge chunk of property taxes ahead and then be "free from property taxes". Well free as long as they didn't die. So yeah property is property is not as simple.
What if your descendents want to live on the same plot of land where they grew up, after your death? Does the plot regress in size?
However with sale of property between strangers, there is a new assessment at each transaction. This should be the same for coding rights too, it would seem. There may be instances where this is not the case...
It would seem though that some people want to preserve such classifications when it comes to historical properties - which may be the play Khosla is taking.
(He is also claiming that his LLC owns it - and not him directly, thus he doesnt need to go to court, personally).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ranchos_of_California
various articles refer to the "original owner" who filed a claim on the land (upheld by the US courts in the mid 1800s), but I can't find anything more than that...
"The judge cited the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which settled the Mexican-American War and required that the U.S. recognize Mexican land grants in cases where a claim had been filed.
The original owner of the land fronting Martin's Beach had indeed filed a claim, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1859, 14 years before California drafted its first constitution."
One issue I don't understand here is why the parcel is exempt from the public easement required through the California state constitution... it makes sense that the treaty required the US to recognize existing land ownership, but it seems strange that it exempt from constitution where it comes to use. For instance, permits would still be required to build on it, land use law is still in effect, right?
I'll try to dig up the opinion and read it some time. If anyone has some interesting links, please post them.
Note: I have not extensively researched this. I googled for the text of the treaty, and then did some searching within it to try to find the parts relevant to property rights. I also googled for the Supreme Court case and read the decision (which was short and not very informative by today's standards). In other words, I could be completely off on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Ca%C3%B1ada_de_Verde_y_...
There are some other clues on this .tiff (fair warning, it bogged down my Shotwell viewer and swap space):
http://gis.co.sanmateo.ca.us/pwraster/RSMvol018/18-RSM-PG017...
Martin is on that map, and the annotations speak to the legal process of the time.
I think what you meant to say was:
"The defendant's position is that California's right of access to the shoreline does not override the pre-existing property right."
As in: this "does not override" phrase you gingerly tucked is not only far from obvious (in this use case); it's highly, highly contentious -- and requires aggressive substantiation to be tenable. In fact, it's a lot like saying:
"The title for this Brooklyn brownstone I just bought ultimately traces back to the Dutch land grants (or Lenape tribe covenants, etc; take your pick); NYC's zoning restrictions do not override the existing property rights. So if you don't like this 40-story casino-hotel-brothel complex I'm building, well, you can just bugger off."
He's claiming that the original owner of the property was granted it in whole by the government of Mexico, which precedes any claims or legal statutes enacted by the US or California governments. I think the property should be confiscated to be held in trust as a lesson to this guy and the rest of the ultra-rich that this is our planet too.
As a former Coastal Commission staff member in the 1980s, I've seen this scenario played out over and over. The so-called issue of Spanish land grants pre-existing and somehow superceding laws like the Coastal Act isn't an issue at all -- land grants occurred in the early 1800s all over California, so Martins Beach isn't any special or privileged circumstance.
It isn't just a matter of the Coastal Act. What was alluded to regarding public access along the road involves what is known as a prescriptive right. Areas with a history of public use can have the right of access through prescriptive rights regardless of the existence of Coastal Act policies. Prescriptive rights have a lengthy history -- and by lengthy, I mean going back to English common law in the 1100s. The standards for a prescriptive easement involve, among other things, that the public use be open, "notorious" (which means well known and not secretive), and continuous for a period of time. Many prescriptive rights inure in a time period as short as 5 years or as long as 20. And it isn't just the coast. If your neighbor builds a concrete block wall between your back yards and it turned out to be on your property and not his (a very common occurrence), over that period of time, if not otherwise contested or challenged, it could become his property if he was to pursue that. So the impact of these decisions is widespread not just in terms of natural resources but also public usage of trails as well.
Access to the water is a right guaranteed not just to and along the coast but to any body of water -- lake, stream, pond, whatever. Article X Section 4 of the California Constitution, enacted shortly after statehood in 1850, states in part that the public has a right to access of "the waters of the state of California," that no person, organization, corporation, or any other entity can block access to the waters of the state, and that the Legislature, in enacting future laws, must give THE most liberal application of those rights possible.
Case in point: When I lived in Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains in southern California, the homeowner association there blocked public access to the lake unless you were an association member/property owner on the lake. The dam was constructed beginning in 1922 and has always been in private ownership by the association. During the drought in the early- to mid-1990s, the lake level dropped nearly 20 feet, and boat owners who didn't have docks that could adjust to fluctuating water levels couldn't launch their boats. Their solution? Not take personal responsibility, certainly. No. They had the Community Services District (for water and sewage disposal) enact an ordinance that charged everyone within the District (whose boundaries far exceeded the area of the homeowners' association) higher rates to raise $60 million to subsidize the wealthy lakefront property owners who didn't have adjustable docks -- fewer than 100 property owners, in a community with over 12,000 permanent year-round residents. This money was for purchasing water from the State Water Project through convoluted three- or four-step water swapping deals with other water districts to obtain water indirectly AND was done in a manner that avoided any approvals that could be conditioned to force public access to the lake directly.
The solution to these problems? Be vigilant. Always be vigilant. The ocean is OUR ocean, and access to the beaches and water is an integral part of the culture of California. This tiny beach, away from view, away from virtually everyone except those very few lucky individuals who live there, is important. It only takes one bad precedent, one bad court ruling, to have impacts not only on this beach, not only on all California beaches, not only all bodies of water, but to any resource belonging to the people of California, whether it be a small creek in the eastern Sierra, a forest, or a desert.
I'm guessing artificial lakes are not included, as there are plenty of examples where gated communities restrict access, such as Lake Sherwood in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village.
They can be found at: http://smc.surfrider.org Looks like they are doing the right thing. And I guess it wouldn't harm writing that I've also just donated a token $100 to them.
I'm not sure what angle they are taking with the permits on the land improvements. Those seem like unrelated issues and even if they beat him on the permits, how does that give them back the road access. Wouldn't he still be able to keep them off. Trespassing is trespassing even if the land owner violated some permit rules. If the California Coastal Commission (in charge of issuing permits) categorically denies his permits just to spite him, they'll be just as much the asshole he is.
In regards to what the tech community can do about this, how about organizing a large beach party and get some boats to ferry people in?
What would be the point? Vinod is not living there so he would be indifferent to it, at least until 2021.
If you have an old deal, that's fine. But you can't justifiably claim you both have a right to be grandfathered in while at the same time updating the property to current standards.
In this particular case I think Vinod has the right to block the access to beach from his property. But at the same time Government has a responsibility to see how an access to the beach may be provided.
I think you will find not everyone agrees with that. Since well before Proudhon's "property is theft" (from "What is property?", 1840), there have been ideological arguments against property rights on the basis that the limit the liberty of the population as a whole. And while wholesale rejection of property rights is not common, it most certainly exist, and has a history pre-dating our written legal systems.
Careful about generalisations.
I recognize that there's complex case-law here that differentiates between those varying shades of grey, but that's just my (unpopular) opinion.
In Norway the concept pre-dates written law, and in its current incarnation it guarantees public right of access to most non-urban land, as well as almost all of the coast line. Basically, outside of urban areas, as long as we avoid peoples gardens, and things like tended fields, we can pretty much go where we want, whether or not it is private property, without seeking permission from the property owner (though it is considered polite to introduce yourself to the owner and seek to take their wishes into consideration if you make use of the rights in the vicinity of where they live).
We can also, with some further limitations, pretty much camp where we want. Further, tradition creates legal rights of access - if a path or a road has a history of public use (20-30 years is a typical yardstick, though frequency of use and the owners actions in the period that usage is becoming established will mattr), that access is legally protected; if a new owner decides to try to prevent continued public access, they will generally face an uphill battle.
The reasoning behind this is basically that allowing a property owner exclusive use of large areas of land would be a massive curtailment of the liberties of the population as a whole, and that maximizing public access to land is a substantially larger net positive in terms of liberty than the relatively limited negative impact for property owners.
It is considered so fundamental in Norway that it was not considered necessary to codify in law until 1957 (almost all of Norwegian law is codified), as it was seen as intrinsic to the legal system. In Sweden, their variation is protected by inclusion in their constitution.
I guess then you don't have a huge problem with vandalism and litter. It is hard to find a public space here where some dickwad hasn't left a beer can, used condom or cigarette butt. We also like to sue the crap out of each other. So anytime someone is on your land, you are subject to getting sued when they get hurt. So I don't blame people for trying to keep other people off their land. It would be nice if we had what you describe. But I think that ship has sailed here.
I think the freedom to roam in general has a substantial impact on reducing this problem - we're taught about these rights in primary school, but also taught about the corresponding duty to leave campsites etc. as we found them, and to be considerate about how we exercise these rights.
Of course, there's always some assholes.
Many technical people -- certainly including myself -- can tend towards thinking that all problems have a single solution, that those solutions are tractable, and that disagreement is a function of lack of information. That is not always the case.
Not sure how it works in the US, but English Law has something to say about this. If your property is blocked by the property of another you get to have a right of passage through his land.
There is a precedent here, and while I absolutely agree that all shoreline should be publicly accessible, if that shoreline is landlocked by private property, that's going to be too bad.
This reminds me of the 'landlord evicts squatter' type stories that spring up from time to time. The issue arises from the time someone gets established in a not-very-firm legal sense - and that is allowed to fester over time. Eventually when someone moves to implement the law as written, it results in ugly battles.
There is also lots of articles about the 'right to roam' in the UK which has similar issues. Often these have been abused by paparazzi to invade the privacy of people who, ironically, purchase remote properties to get some privacy.
Personally, if I had the $37m, I wouldn't have the stomach for this kind of fight and would have moved on. But there is probably a big win coming for establishing ownership over the entire land over the next ten years or so.
I've always found the placement of properties right on the shoreline in California and Florida somewhat surprising. Where I live, virtually nobody lives right on the shoreline like that, simply because there is little, if any, private property that close to a beach.
This isn't true since land ownership itself is something that can only exist with the consent of the community. Unlike the fruits of one's labor, the modern concept of land ownership is just a modernization of the older mechanism of land ownership, which was enforced by the pointy end of a sharp stick. In that old model of land ownership, you'd have a lot of trouble holding onto your land if your activities on your land started poisoning the local water supply and ruining the surrounding land for everyone.
In the new model of government enforced land-ownership, you still have to treat your land in a way that's compatible with the needs of the landowners that surround you.
Late yesterday, Surfrider's case was assigned to a judge and room. Here's the scoop: Hall of Justice & Records
What: Opening arguments in Surfrider Foundation v. Martins Beach I, LLC and Martins Beach II, LLC
When: 2pm on Wednesday, May 7
Where: San Mateo County Superior Court, 400 County Center, Redwood City Department 22, Courtroom 8A
Photo credit Rob Caughlan
Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Mallach presiding
It is likely that at some point there will be a court sanctioned site visit to Martin's Beach. At present, the date and time of such visit is unknown.
If you attend, please show your support by wearing blue! Thanks!!
This yearning mostly comes when I'm reminded that there are a small number of people who've not only managed to accumulate such an obscene amount of wealth that the title "billionaire" can be bestowed upon them, but that they use that wealth for predominantly selfish outcomes.
And it's only going to get worse. When the enduring puzzle of longevity is finally cracked and death can be reliably cheated, it's not going to be those living in abject poverty, or the dogged grafters, or even the skilled professionals who benefit. No, it'll be that small group of rich and powerful who'll use it to further promote this monumental inequality of wealth.
It's not the triviality of some beach access that is really the issue, it's just a distraction. It's this vile aristocracy of gold and greed that is the enduring problem, the manifestation of which is the source of countless suffering amongst humanity.
Indeed I think it would be about as close to utopian as we're ever going to get.
One man's benevolent ruler is another's tyrannical despot.
Unfortunately, the current implementations of this ideal fall far short.
You seem to think that communism is the same thing as "communism under Stalin", and that's incorrect.
Surely the personal happiness of a few hundred human beings who worked hard and got lucky (or were born to someone who worked hard and got lucky) weighs more than the hunger of millions in the third world. I mean if they were really that hungry they would get a job and feed their family, right my friend?
I spend a lot of time along that stretch of coast in the ocean. Anyone even remotely familiar with the place should know that this kind of thing wont go over very well. It almost seems foolish.
If he wins and gets to keep the public out, I guarantee the locals will figure out someway to really annoy him. Maybe do a special daily boat trip, bringing homeless people from SF on a field trip to the beach.
This could be a nice little summer money-making opportunity for some college students, as long as Khosla is able to keep land access closed. Get a boat, and for, say, $20 per head ferry people to the beach and back. I bet a lot of people would pay that, assuming that you don't ferry so many people as to make the beach as crowded as other beaches. You could probably make $1000/day at this, at least.
Also, as it happens, KV is an investor of YC startups: http://blog.ycombinator.com/khosla-ventures-is-joining-the-y...
That being said, I want to moderate my comment. Until now, the situation is still under control, but it could become worse and then start to be a PR problem for KV. It's still time for them to do something.
Makes it a lot harder to deal with.
As a former Coastal Commission staff member in the 1980s,
I've seen this scenario played out over and over. The so-called
issue of Spanish land grants pre-existing and somehow
superceding laws like the Coastal Act isn't an issue at
all -- land grants occurred in the early 1800s all over
California, so Martins Beach isn't any special or privileged
circumstance.
Ah yes, that plucky underdog, the State of California.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870036/
It features Kurt Rappaport, the real estate agent who represented Larry Ellison on his Malibu Beach property hunt.
http://www.malibutimes.com/news/article_cde2956a-3ea5-11e2-a...
You can take a photographic tour of Ellison's vast real estate portfolio here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-real-estate-201...
That's just grossly twisting and simplying things to get a view that you like. It is tech that produces extreme wealth [1]. Google's Brin and Page, MS's Gates, FB's Zuckerberg, Oracle's Ellison, etc. They're all companies that're there and being driven by and with extremely wealthy individuals at the helm. If Page and Brin were doing similarly douchebaggy things, I would be completely okay with folks blocking Google buses. How else do you get attention and reparation of your woes these days when you've got little else that you can practically do?
[1]: The most pernicious variation is that new one known as the 'sharing economy', which is all about easy rent-seeking and exploiting society by profiting from externalities.
Take all the billionares from tech form the Forbes list, and try to distill out the egregious actions of that pool of billionaires.
Now rope the oil barons, Saudi princes, ball bearing magnates, Koch brothers, and Wal-Mart founders up, and distill out their egregious actions.
Prediction: the tech founders will be marked by things like "donating all their money to charitable foundations", and the rest of the billionaires will be known for things like "organizing efforts to disenfranchise large blocs of voters".
Furthermore, your jab at "the sharing economy", which I have qualms with as well (punch my name and "Airbnb" in the search box below; or, do the same with "Uber") is a red herring. Whatever you might think of Uber, their founders aren't restricting California beaches.
Likewise for politicians, cops, CEOs, lawyers etc.
Fortunately, the reputation of us techies isn't yet as bad as the reputation of bankers, politicians and lawyers! Just as well, as it's not clear to me that we have the will or ability to improve or manage our collective reputation.
I can't. The comparisons to colonialism are laughable, at best. Tech employees are predominantly Americans who chose to live in Silicon Valley. So apparently moving within your own country and establishing a lasting presence (including friends and family) in your home is colonialism and military invasion now?
What exactly makes tech workers not locals? Many tech workers have lived in the Valley for over a decade. I surely hope that's long enough to establish that they are, in fact, locals.
This is just ridiculous.
More than twenty bus companies are shuttling workers to and from the factory.
And it's no big deal. Of course you curse them when you happen to be in traffic right behind several of those, but they evoke no hatred in the populace, but even some kind of pride.
But, of course, there's not much jealousy involved when it comes to Daimler. Everyone knows someone working there. And the workers there don't generally carry the stigma of being filthy rich.
Google is more elite, I guess.
But the problem is certainly not the buses or the traffic per se.
Hmm. Sounds like someone whose tripped-over their own super ego. We must help him! Everyone get out! I'm going to call in for a tsunami to re-level the playing-field :-)
"Nancy Cave and her staff want to keep Martins Beach open to the public. Khosla will need permits from the Commission if he wants to do almost anything on the property."
Are they inferring that they will screw with his permits in order to force him into giving access?
> The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the 1987 case of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission that if the state of California through its regulatory agency, the California Coastal Commission, thinks an easement on private land is a good idea and a valuable public purpose, they should use eminent domain and pay for it, as opposed to demanding concessions from a land owner in exchange for a building permit. The court considered that "an out and out plan of extortion" of property. In the case, the owners of beachfront property were required to grant an easement for public access to facilitate pedestrian access to public beaches as a condition of permit approval to enlarge their home. The court, in a narrow decision, ruled that an "essential nexus" must exist between the asserted "legitimate state interest” and the permit condition imposed by government.
EDIT: Actually, if you dig a little deeper into that case, the ruling has little impact on the Martin's Beach case. In the Nollan case, the CCC was requesting an access road/path where none had previously existed. The CCC's argument was actually pretty weak, they were claiming that the development would result in "psychological impediments to public access" which gave them the right to demand concessions. In the Martin's Beach case, the CCC should have the power to demand public access concessions if the road historically served as a public access point (assuming the federal treaty issues don't negate that power). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollan_v._California_Coastal_Co...
No individual, partnership, or corporation, claiming or possessing the frontage or tidal lands of a harbor, bay, inlet, estuary, or other navigable water in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water ...
At any rate, nothing pisses me off more than some petty bureaucrat who uses his limited power to bully someone for an entirely different reason.
If you don't like that fact he is refusing beach access, then petition the gov't to change the rules. Don't start abusing your power. What's next? They'll "accidentally" disconnect his municipal water?
For the record, its not that great of a surf spot, but this is more about letting someone establish precedent and thus leading to more beach access rights (Malibu...) getting chipped away at slowly but surely.
It would be great if we had Hawaii's right-of-way laws...
And to the original poster - not sure why you were down voted for asking a question.
Alternatively, he's "defending himself against a power-hungry government determined to curtail his property rights"
http://steveblank.com/2013/06/28/in-defense-of-unreasonablen...
This shapes up to be an epic battle among the two men, the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. My money is on Steve.
Perhaps Steve will join the fray?
It's not a case of personal liberty, it's a case of someone with a lot of money overstepping their bounds because they think nobody will do anything about it.
There are people on here, reading this comment right now, who will become fantastically rich.
Minimize externalities to your behavior. Be considerate, be thoughtful, be kind.
Be the opposite of Vinod Khosla.
I'm not going to start a bikeshed over the technicalities covered in the coastal commission report though - my original point was how little regard many of these individuals have for others. And how no one should really be surprised that the technology community seems to represent the worst case examples of this.
Do you feel he's a really convinicing liar too, or genuine?