In a big improvement within the long-running battle over whether or not Silicon Valley tech billionaire Vinod Khosla can restrict public entry to Martins Seaside, a scenic stretch of sand south of Half Moon Bay, a decide has rejected Khosla’s try to throw out a lawsuit by state companies that declare he has been “improperly and illegally” limiting public entry to the favored seashore for greater than a decade.
Late Thursday, San Mateo County County Superior Courtroom Choose Raymond Swope issued the choice.
The ruling by Swope, an appointee of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a loss for Khosla. It implies that the lawsuit, filed in 2020 by the California Coastal Fee and the State Lands Fee, will proceed to a trial, scheduled for April. That trial might end in Khosla being compelled to take away no trespassing indicators and to take down a gate that he has used to dam the one highway resulting in the waterfront since 2010.
“We continue to think that public access here is of huge value,” stated Lisa Haage, chief of enforcement for the Coastal Fee, a state company primarily based in San Francisco. “Martins Beach is an iconic and gorgeous place. There has been long-term public use and it means a lot to the community.”
Jeffrey Essner, a San Jose lawyer representing Khosla, didn’t reply to requests Friday for remark.
Khosla, 69, of Portola Valley, is a enterprise capitalist and the co-founder of Solar Microsystems. He has a web price of $7.3 billion, in line with Forbes.
The struggle over the sandy seashore on the San Mateo County coast has gained nationwide consideration. Khosla has known as it a case of personal property rights, whereas political leaders, surfers and environmentalists have stated the difficulty might set a precedent about whether or not California’s seashores might be closed off by rich landowners.
The standoff started in 2008, when Khosla bought 88 acres of coastal land alongside Freeway 1 that surrounds the seashore that had been utilized by households for generations for $32.5 million. Two years later, he locked the gates, employed guards and posted no trespassing indicators.
Surfers and environmental teams protested. They famous that as a result of the seashore, which is public alongside the water line underneath the Coastal Act, is flanked on either side by steep cliffs, the highway is the one strategy to entry it.
“According to the courts, the right to exclude others is the most valuable right in the “bundle of rights” that constitutes property,” Khosla wrote in a 2018 on-line publish.
The Coastal Fee advised Khosla that he should apply for a allow to lock the gate. The Surfrider Basis, a non-profit group, sued him over the difficulty. After he misplaced that case within the decrease courts, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, arguing that the state’s landmark Coastal Act, permitted by voters in 1972, was “Orwellian” and unconstitutional.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom refused to take the case. The justices left in place decrease courtroom rulings that discovered Khosla couldn’t lock the gate throughout the half-mile-long highway and not using a allow from the Coastal Fee as a result of the Coastal Act requires permits if landowners change public entry to seashores.
Since then, Khosla’s managers have opened the gate throughout some instances of the week, and charged a $10 parking charge. Many surfers and beachgoers park alongside Freeway 1 and stroll down the highway to the seashore to keep away from paying.
“We often see it open, but quite often we also see it closed,” stated Ed Larenas, 72, a Moss Seaside resident who has been browsing at Martins Seaside for 40 years. “People drive over here and they don’t know if it is open. It’s random. And people with disabilities, older people and people with children can’t walk all that way to the beach.”
Within the present lawsuit, the Coastal Fee and the State Lands Fee contend that generations of households who used the seashore and the highway resulting in it earlier than Khosla’s possession assured an irrevocable public proper of entry underneath long-established authorized precedent that he can not revoke.
To bolster their case, the Coastal Fee collected pictures, letters, journal entries and different proof from greater than 230 households who used the seashore relationship again to the Twenties for picnicking, fishing, swimming and different recreation.
In 2018, Khosla gained a separate case involving related points that was filed by a non-profit group known as Buddies of Martins Seaside. However the state companies, their authorized firepower, and their household historical past proof weren’t a part of that showdown.
In that case, the First District Courtroom of Enchantment in San Francisco dominated that as a result of beach-goers paid parking charges previously to the property’s earlier proprietor, a public proper to the highway had not been established.
However the companies behind the newest lawsuit say their proof upends that argument. The earlier house owners, the Deeney household, and their enterprise companions, the Watt household, didn’t constantly accumulate parking charges till the Sixties or Seventies, the present lawsuit alleges. Even after that, the go well with says, individuals frequently used the highway for years with out being charged. Additional, when it was collected, the charge was to park a automobile, to not entry the seashore, so the charges “did not amount to a restriction on public use,” the state’s lawsuit claims.
Khosla had argued that the present case ought to be thrown out as a result of the underlying points had been already determined within the Buddies of Martins Seaside case six years in the past.
However Choose Swope disagreed. He famous in Thursday’s ruling that the Coastal Fee and the State Lands Fee weren’t events to that lawsuit. And he wrote that the state confirmed proof that earlier than Khosla purchased the property in 2008, San Mateo County officers advised his property supervisor, Steven Baugher, that there was public entry to the seashore and that it “will have to remain.”
“We are always open to trying to settle this case,” the Coastal Fee’s Haage stated Friday.
