[curun1r]

> Why isn't that enough?

According to the article, the owners of the parcels have the right to traverse the land he already bought. From the sound of the article, this is making a mountain out of a molehill.

He wants his privacy and, thanks to bizarre land ownership practices in Hawaii, these parcels are fractionally owned by hundreds of individuals making it impossible to make a traditional offer. This legal process, far from being abusive, is the standard process when dealing with these sorts of parcels since it clarifies who actually owns the properties. It sounds like once the list of owners is established by the court, he'll make a traditional offer rather than forcing an auction.

[disordinary]

It's only Bizarre to you, it's not Bizarre to the people who own the property I'm sure. What's Bizarre is being forced to sell land that you've owned for generations.

[gnopgnip]

Some of these pieces of land have hundreds of owners. In this case one of the owners has an interest of less than a one-hundredth of a percent. Most of the owners do not even know what they own. The legal fees to establish who has a fractional interest in the property would outweigh the value of the property normally for each individual owner, but with Zuckerberg footing to bill to find out the family tree all of the owners will benefit.

[pyre]

This sounds like the sort of thing where you have to sue someone to force the court to sort out legalities. Sort of like the RIAA/MPAA suing Joe Does that are associated with an IP to figure out who is on the other end of it.

If Zuck is using the court to force a sale, then it's a total asshole/dick move. If he's using the court to sort out ownership of land so that he knows who he needs to deal with to buy it (as a normal transaction), that's another story.

[Hondor]

Something I learnt from the Martin Shkreli drug price increase story is that if you're going to defend someone who's being abused, first see if they even exist. Even then, see if their culture and laws make this an actual horrible suffering or not. What this isn't is some poor low income native being forced out of his house that he inherited from his family on land that he grew up on.

[curun1r]

Given that some of the owners don't even know that they have an ownership stake in these properties, I'm not sure that's correct.

[ghostDancer]

That kind of law exists in other places too, if your property cuts access to other people's property they have the right to cross it. It's not only in Hawaii, i've seen it in many other places , in Spain in rural areas is quite common.

[p94ka]

Who has the right to 700 acres of privacy? I don't care how rich you are, there should be reasonable limits on what you can deny the public access to. In Sweden and Norway (and other places, I'm sure), they have a law called allemansrätten, which states that anyone has the right to roam on and camp on all land, as long as you don't cause any damage and reasonably respect others privacy. If the US had such a law, he probably wouldn't be engaging in this lawsuit.