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Zuckerberg Sues Hundreds of Hawaiians To Force Property Sales To Him (msn.com) 284

A user writes: Apparently, owning 700 acres of land in Hawaii isn't enough -- Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has filed suit to force owners of several small parcels of land to sell to the highest bidder. The reason? These property owners are completely surrounded by Zuckerberg's land holdings and therefore have lawful easement to cross his property in order to get to theirs. Many of these land owners have held their land for generations, but seemingly Mr. Zuckerberg can not tolerate their presence so close to his private little slice of paradise. Landowners such as these came to own their land when their ancestors were "given" the land as Hawaiian natives. If successful in his "quiet title" court action, Mr. Zuckerberg will finally have his slice of Hawaii's beaches and tropical lands without having to deal with the pesky presence of neighbors who were on his land before he owned it. Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans? CNBC reports: "The cases target a dozen small plots of so-called 'kuleana' lands that are inside the much larger property that Zuckerberg bought on Kauai. Kuleana lands are properties that were granted to native Hawaiians in the mid-1800. One suit, according to the Star-Advertiser, was filed against about 300 people who are descendants of an immigrant Portuguese sugar cane plantation worker who bought four parcels totaling two acres of land in 1894. One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."
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Zuckerberg Sues Hundreds of Hawaiians To Force Property Sales To Him

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:46PM (#53699577)

    Who else is going to bid for land that's surrounded entirely by someone else's land, and subject to these kinds of legal encumbrances?

    The man is a bastard and a prime candidate for an urgent visit from a large group of people toting pitchforks and torches, if anyone can find any in present-day Hawaii.

    • paparazzi who want legal access to Zuckerbergs land?

    • by Calydor ( 739835 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @08:00PM (#53700105)

      Well, this should backfire nicely.

      They should get together, offer Zuckerberg a bid of ONE PENNY for his 700 acres, and no one else should bid on them.

    • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      Who else is going to bid for land that's surrounded entirely by someone else's land

      We could crowd-source, each have a small share of ownership and party on the land he wants!

  • by Mike Van Pelt ( 32582 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:51PM (#53699613)

    From TFA, it seems like these are old titles, many of the people who inherited them have no idea they "own" these properties, and thus haven't been paying property taxes on them since 180something.

    I don't much care for The Zuck, but before taking off on the all too predictable partisan political tears, people should inform themselves on which Supreme Court justices ruled which way on the Kelo decision.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You're not reading TFA correctly, because if they have " no idea " they own them then obviously they aren't crossing his property to visit property they don't care about.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:09PM (#53699713)

      I don't have high expectations for the quality of the content on Slashdot, but this summary is particularly bad.

      Regardless of what your stance is on this matter, the fact remains that the summary is highly biased and editorialized, to the point of the entire submission being rubbish.

      Crap like

      Apparently, owning 700 acres of land in Hawaii isn't enough

      and

      but seemingly Mr. Zuckerberg can not tolerate their presence so close to his private little slice of paradise

      and

      will finally have his slice of Hawaii's beaches and tropical lands without having to deal with the pesky presence of neighbors who were on his land before he owned it

      and especially

      Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans?

      should have all been removed, and doing so would have made the submission far more informative and objective.

      The "Who knew ... just another kind of Native Americans?" junk is particularly stupid. The people called "Native Americans" today are just the descendants (ignoring how many of them are also descended from Europeans, sometimes proportionally more so than from non-Europeans) of the most recent waves of migration to the Americas from Eurasia [wikipedia.org]. It's rarely mentioned how these later waves likely destroyed previous cultures in the Americas, such as the Clovis people [wikipedia.org], because that wouldn't fit with the leftist narrative of today's "Native Americans" being perpetual victims.

      The editors should have seriously reworked this submission's summary. Perhaps it would have been better just to throw it out completely, it's so inherently bad.

      This summary and all of its obvious bias just makes those against Zuckerberg's actions look like kooks and extremists.

      • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:27PM (#53699885) Journal
        Quite right. Exaggerating one's facts, even when in the right, is a common mistake when presenting one's case.

        It lends credence to the deniers, who can denounce everything you present in your argument if you stretch one or two facts.

        It is the polar opposite of fortuitous that this strategy is regularly employed in important debates like global warming and minimum wage.

        • by e r ( 2847683 )

          ...even when in the right...

          That's precisely the question under consideration though, isn't it?

          • That's precisely always the question under consideration when we're weighing the ephemeral merits of a values system indoctrinated in us by our genetic predecessors and shaped by the happenstance of our environs.

            Nonetheless, you wouldn't allow the brainwashing you withstood, at the hands of Disney (when the evil hunters killed Bambi's mum) to stand in the way of feeding your children. If you had to.

            So it seems, good and bad are fungible.

      • It's rarely mentioned how these later waves likely destroyed previous cultures in the Americas, such as the Clovis people

        So you're saying that today's Native Americans are carrying a "red guilt"?

      • The "Who knew ... just another kind of Native Americans?" junk is particularly stupid. The people called "Native Americans" today are just the descendants (ignoring how many of them are also descended from Europeans, sometimes proportionally more so than from non-Europeans) of the most recent waves of migration to the Americas from Eurasia [wikipedia.org]. It's rarely mentioned how these later waves likely destroyed previous cultures in the Americas, such as the Clovis people [wikipedia.org],

        Clovis and Folsum were "cultures," not races of people. There is precisely zero evidence that anybody "wiped out" the Clovis culture.

        because that wouldn't fit with the leftist narrative of today's "Native Americans" being perpetual victims.

        Heeeeere we go. A typing toolshed. Cool.

        • by Cinnamon Beige ( 1952554 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @11:47PM (#53700949)

          Actually, if you go through the history of the Americas, you find a lot of records of one group pushing out another, as well as some pretty good evidence that groups did indeed get wiped out. (Proving it tends to require there be written records.) Pushing out native peoples is not a European invention; until modern times it and weather were the driving forces behind all human migrations, and it still drives a lot of migration to this day.

          • by mvdwege ( 243851 )

            Pushing out native peoples is not a European invention;

            You're missing a critical point, dickhead: That still makes it wrong

            • Pushing out native peoples is not a European invention;

              You're missing a critical point, dickhead: That still makes it wrong

              No, I'm not missing it, I merely was presuming that the readers' IQs were sufficiently high that explicitly stating the obvious would be an insult to their intelligence. It doesn't need to be a European invention to be wrong, and the person I was replying to was denying that it happened in the Americas...which I suppose I ought to explicitly note is wrong--oh, and inherently racist, not for the least because some of the evidence we've got we have because the Natives themselves told us.

    • It is not the number that is bad, if he sued a single person to force them off of their ancestral land, then their is no punishment too hefty for him.

    • I don't much care for The Zuck, but before taking off on the all too predictable partisan political tears

      I know the GOP lately doesn't seem to stand for anything but billionaires, but I don't think zuckerberg quite qualifies as a "partisan" issue yet...

  • by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:52PM (#53699621) Homepage

    What is it about having money that turns people into such assholes?

    I mean really, 700 acres? How can someone not find sufficient privacy for their family on 700 acres, even if it contains a few parcels he doesn't own?

    • by RealGene ( 1025017 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:45PM (#53700015)

      What is it about having money that turns people into such assholes?

      Let the record show that Zuckerberg was an asshole long before he had money.

      • What is it about having money that turns people into such assholes?

        Let the record show that Zuckerberg was an asshole long before he had money.

        I don't think being an AH is strictly a prerequisite to getting rich, but it certainly seems to help.

      • by catmistake ( 814204 ) on Friday January 20, 2017 @04:41AM (#53701845) Journal

        Ironically, the bigger assholes here are Zuckerberg's attorneys, and they're being assholes to Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg doesn't need to sue anyone, nor does he need to track down the owners, nor does he need any fucking attorneys to acquire ownership of that land, and he doesn't even need to buy it.. All he needs to do is pay the back taxes on it, continue paying the taxes on it, and live there 20 years while improving the property, and ownership of the land passes to him via Hawaiian adverse possession laws. [findlaw.com]

        Mr. Zuckerberg, your attorneys are fucking you. I hope you can enjoy it as much as everyone else is.

    • As someone else said, Zuck's always been an asshole, long before he had money. In this case, the headline is utter bull, Zuck's doing something else assholish today, but the legal proceeding isn't what the headline claims.

      As the article says, there are four half-acre parcels, owned by more than 300 descendants of the people who lived there 150 years ago. That is, each little parcel has about 80 owners, several of unknown whereabouts.

      There's no chance anybody is going to track down all 300 descendants and ge

    • It's not just money, it's also Hawaii. There's a stereotype of the flyover states as being full of people who want to kill you for even thinking about stepping foot on their property, but it's far more true in Hawaii. People like Zuck move to paradise on earth, then act surprised and frustrated that other people like the area as well.
    • even if it contains a few parcels he doesn't own?

      That depends. Do you spend money buying land when the title of pockets of land is unclear?

      Maybe look into the details a bit and realise that no one is actually living on the land. Heck some of the people in the target of the suit are actually dead. It's not a privacy issue as no one has been on his land, and entirely a case of "I bought something, but there's a few little black marks no one can identify, aren't being taxed, and the government hasn't ownership of them, courts please clear the situation."

      Ther

  • by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:54PM (#53699637) Homepage
    Although I'm not a Zuckerberg fan, the headline is a little misleading. Apparently for most of these parcels, the actual ownership is unclear-- the ownership is split sometimes among hundreds of descendants of the original owners, and in some cases it's not clear who owns it, or if they're even alive or if they're not, who the heirs are. This seems to be the only way to clear title to the land.
    • Actually it isn't unclear at all. The owners (usually dozens or hundreds of them) are joint owners in all regards except that they can't unilaterally decide to sell the parcel.

      What is unclear is how to divvy up the property taxes. Hawaii's property tax system is the second worst in the country, in terms of complexity. (Minnesota is still king, for totally different reasons.) But the software they use is perfectly capable of managing arbitrary numbers of co-owners per parcel.

      I'm pretty sure Hawaii switch

  • by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @06:55PM (#53699641)

    I wish I owned an acre of land right in the middle of where he wants to build his house. I'd put a big barbed-wire fence around it, park the biggest, ugliest, smelliest old trailer I could find on it, demand continued access rights and refuse to sell at any money.

  • by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:00PM (#53699669)

    Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans?

    Apparently everyone but the author. What a moron.

    • Native Hawaiians aren't Native Americans. The latter are people indigenous to the Americas (north, central, or south), i.e., the continental land mass. Hawaii isn't even on the same tectonic plate.
    • Native Hawaiians are Polynesians, not natives of North/South America.

      No connection except that they are both "brown".

  • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:00PM (#53699675)
    People have been saying it for years, but I really feel like this place isn't what it used to be. Here we have a terrible, click-baity headline followed by a terrible, lazily editorialized summary, none of which is "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters."

    Really, does this impact us in some way that I'm not seeing? At least with stories about Steve Jobs's megayacht, there was a cool megayacht to be interested in.
    • by Notabadguy ( 961343 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:16PM (#53699771)

      Relax - it's BeauHD, who is the absolute shitposter of Slashdot.

      It helps if you scroll through the editors, and pick and choose what to read. Assume that anything where BeauHD was the editor is going to be a cobbled together, misleading, politicized shitpost.

    • That yacht is a damn fugly thing, though.

    • most of the really cool stuff that exists at the level a /.tter can understand has come and gone. So we get crap like this to fill space. This isn't the 90s anymore when cool tech was coming non-stop or the 2000s when you could just run tech layoff articles nonstop...
  • Referring to Zuckerberg as "Him" makes the title of the article sound like he's being deified.

  • Zuckerfuck is playing with fire... Literally fire and lava..

  • One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."

    Someone got paid to betray his kin and I bet it was big enough to matter.

    • What it doesn't say is if he let go of his claim on the land or not. He probably just wants it all to himself.

  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:13PM (#53699753)
    sheesh! what is zuckerburg trying to do? start his own country? even if i was a billionaire i would not want more than maybe 1 square mile, heck i could find plenty of privacy in 20 acres of back wood land in rural montana or wyoming, build a nice warm mansion that looks like a GIANT log cabin in where it cant be seen from the nearby roads, and put up a chainlink fence around it topped with razor wire, and motion detectors & security cams
  • Let's deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @07:14PM (#53699757)

    If Hawaiians let us build our Thirty Meter Telescope, we will agree to cement Mark Zuckerberg into the foundation thereof.

  • Zuckerberg is a scumbag. That is all.

  • by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Thursday January 19, 2017 @10:19PM (#53700587)

    The lawsuit(s) being filed are to determine ownership of the parcels of land. Not to force the sale of the land.

    Zuckerberg is suing to find out who owns the land so that he can negotiate to purchase the land from them. Right now he can't purchase the land because no one knows who owns it.

    He is not suing to force the sale, he is suing to make the sale possible.

  • Clearly Zuckerberg has more right to this land that the native Hawaiians whose family have had rights to it for generations. After all, Zuckerberg is a Jew and in the book that the Jews wrote it clearly says that God will always side with the Jews over all others no matter what. This is called "The Covenant". Jews have a long history of taking the land that they want from other people who it belongs to. Not just the Palestine settlements where they kill the Palestinians who are living there and then "settle

  • They have a lot of experience nuking tropical paradises, why not put their knowledge to good use finally? There's only one owner and if you time it just right, he'll be gone with the wind after the test...

  • Please go fuck yourself you spoiled little bitch....

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