Mark Zuckerberg, in addition to controlling this little website called Facebook, owns a massive compound in Hawaii. And he has not endeared himself to his neighbors, to put it mildly — building a massive wall and generally annoying everyone who lives near him. Now, he might be doubling down on that by suing hundreds of people, even dead ones, in order to ensure his solitude.
In Hawaii, which often sees people residing on or having a claim to land but having no paperwork, “quiet title” law is generally used to settle land disputes. Basically, the idea is that the court settles, once and for all, who owns the land by “quieting” claims to the title (of which there can be many, as a property’s owners increase over the years.
Without this action, Zuckerberg would, in theory, have to let whoever owned the land onto his 700-acre estate. So he’s suing to force people with claims to sell to the highest bidder. Spoiler: He’ll be the highest bidder.
For some this is sure to be a windfall, but for others it brings up sticky issues about Hawaiian heritage and land rights. “Quiet title” issues have been used to displace Native Hawaiians for decades, making the law in general a sore point. How land is passed down in Hawaii doesn’t help, either. The Native Hawaiian government didn’t have a land ownership law until 1850, and under that law, if someone passed away without a will, then their land was divided into shares equally among their descendants. There’s no requirement that a descendant even be informed of this, so shares can be divvied up between descendants unknowingly for decades.
That’s created a situation where, in some cases, the world’s sixth-richest human being is suing people who had absolutely no idea what’s going on:
Marian Tavares of Hilo…said she didn’t know about the family land on Kauai or the lawsuit. She didn’t know what to make of the situation offhand. Tavares is alleged to own a 1/191, or about 0.5 percent, stake in the land.
Cameron Pila of Palolo, said he knew of the land but lost a connection to Kauai when his grandmother Margaret Jordan Cameron left Hawaii before she died in 1993. Pila, whose share in the family land is listed at 1/156 in the lawsuit, said he can’t be upset over losing a stake in something that he never possessed. “No hurt, no foul,” he said.
It can cost up to six figures to defend one of these suits, something many of the heirs in question probably don’t have. But in all likelihood the owners will sell. Zuckerberg will likely still have his massive estate at the end of it, but whether he’ll have the goodwill of his neighbors is an open question.
