Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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The debate is absolutely about property rights--the fact that the State of California doesn't have any basis to prevent him from putting a gate on his own property: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art....

California courts have already held in this case that there is no "public trust" access to the beach, due to the peculiarities of land titles that originated in Mexico before Californian statehood.

A California court of appeals has now held that the State's other hook, the idea that the property was "dedicated to public use" is also baseless. That's what this article is about: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A154022.PDF

> That said, we have been tasked here with reviewing a trial court’s application of the common law of public dedication, which is the sole legal basis for Friends’ remaining claims in this case.

> We have endeavored faithfully to follow the prior holdings of our Supreme Court and fellow appellate courts in applying common law of public dedication principles here. However, we have not attempted to extend the public dedication doctrine beyond the common law parameters previously recognized by court decisions in this state. As strong as the coastal access policies of our state are, we do not understand them to empower us to do so.

There is no "rightful public access" to this property.

I don't see how Vinod is any different than the Sea Ranch authority in the mid 1970s. Precedent is not in Vinod's favor.

The California Coastal Access law was based on Sea Ranch blocking access to the ocean in the mid 1970s. All building at Sea Ranch was blocked until Sea Ranch put in access trails to the beach. The temporary Coastal Access law was then made permanent.

I don't feel sorry for someone of means buying property without any understanding of California state law. Vinod is claiming property rights he never had.

Khosla won on the key point of California state law: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1733249.html

The appellate court held that his beach was not subject to California’s “public trust” doctrine due to title tracing back to a Mexican land grant before California statehood. That was in 2016.

All the litigation since then had been only a different, much weaker theory that the Martin’s beach owners dedicated the property to public use. Khosla just won that battle too.

Why are you so ardently defending a man who is so clearly in the wrong here? He is so much of an asshole about this that he's proud of it and boasts about it to look tough in VC meetings.

The spirit of the law in California is very obviously to provide public access to all beaches without exception. Good job on his lawyers on finding a weird ancient technicality to lean millions of dollars on but it's bullshit and he and everyone else knows it.

Vinod is literally the evil heartless corporate billionaire in 80's movies who wants to bulldoze the small town rec center. He arrests surfers trying to go to their own public beach and brags that he's never even set foot on the property and couldn't care less about it besides the "principal" of property rights.

Why are you making this about character and personality. Vinod bought a property advertised as having particular rights associated. Does it have these or not? Clearly the courts should decide. Want to visit this beach urgently? Get a kayak.

Khosla is clearly in the right. First, Khosla won in court on his "weird ancient technicality": https://landuselawblog.lexblogplatform.com/wp-content/upload....

Second, since the time of Justinian (527-565 AD), the public trust doctrine applied to the land up to the high tide line, and covered navigation and fishing. Then in 1971 the California Supreme Court discovered the right to surf and sunbathe in that ancient doctrine. Gee, it was hiding in there the whole time! California 100% deserved to be one-upped by Khosla. The fact that Khosla did so by invoking his rights under a treaty that pre-dated the state of California itself just makes it all more delicious.

Third, the California Coastal Commission proved itself the bad guys. It wasn't happy with even the California Supreme Court's made-up version of the public trust doctrine. It's inconvenient to sunbathe on just the tidal land, so the CCC demanded that Khosla run a public beach on his property. An unelected agency extracting concessions from a private property owner beyond what the law provides for is third-world country levels of government abuse.

The only thing that could make this better would be if Khosla sued the CCC for wasting his time and money.

This is very confusing.

In California I am pretty sure that private property starts at high tide for the ocean and low tide for other bodies of water.

So you are not talking about proposition 20 which starts at high tide and extends 1000 yards inland, you are talking about the land between high tide and low tide which I am pretty sure Vinod does not own.

I am not sure what you think he won in this particular case. Proposition 20 still holds (from everything I can tell). To overthrow prop 20 he would have to overthrow the will of the people. This is (by the way) why most of us oppose Vinod. He might be a great guy in other ways.

Is this your first introduction to how the rule of law works? It turns out that law, properly applied, doesn't care if the person it's being applied to is "evil and heartless". And pointing out what the law says isn't anywhere near a defense (ardent or otherwise) of the person whose favor it falls in.

If I understand the case correctly (I am not a lawyer) Vinod still needs approval of the California Coastal Commission to restrict access. I believe the case only struck down the argument that the previous owner formed a precedent since they charged for parking.

I will go back to not worrying about this case. I was worried Vinod was overturning California law which would really irk me.

Rightful public access is what the government of California is unless the federal government steps in and says otherwise. Vinod doesn't have a case really, he just has a stable of lawyers. It's probably just something to keep him from getting bored in his old age.

That was my understanding as well - this goes back (or at least that's Khosla's argument) to before California became a part of the US.

Interestingly, property right dating back to Mexican land grants are respected in the US as a part of the agreement that settled the Mexican American War.

I don't know enough to say whether that's a valid argument in this particular case.

It's not only a valid argument, it's exactly what the California court of appeals held in this case. From the law review article I linked:

> While the public trust doctrine can protect access rights over private land, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to extend that protection to private land certified under the 1851 federal law implementing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, where the federal or state government had not asserted an interest in title proceeding. Therefore, the court of appeal in Friends I found that, because the Martin’s Beach property had been certified under the 1851 law without any mention of a public interest and never passed into state ownership, there could be no common law public trust easement over the land to the water.

> And while California courts hold that Article X, section 4 of the California Constitution affirms and codifies “at least in part” the public trust doctrine of coastal access, “absent clear legislative intent to the contrary,” the access requirements do not apply retroactively.26 Applying this constitutional principle, the court held that section 4 could not protect public access to Martin’s Beach since it was passed decades after the property became privately owned.

Are you telling me we can't eat the rich in this case?!?

That's seems dumb since they taste so good in a proper bbq sauce and a good Chianti on the side.

This is exactly how Vinod’s lawyers want you to see this: some complicated and interesting legal case. While you might be accurate about the details, it’s not within the public interest to see those details as relevant. The truth is that Vinod bought a property overestimating it’s value and this legal nonsense is how he tries to recoup from his mistake. It is not within the taxpayers interests to entertain him.

So you are saying he failed to do his due diligence?

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