Isn’t there a Scandinavian country that does it that way? I think I read about some guy in a Lambo having to pay $100k (or Scan-equivalent currency) for a speeding ticket.
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I encounter similar situations occasionally when hiking. There are hiking routes in my part of the world that are public rights of way on private land. The landowners post the property, gate off the routes, and otherwise discourage access. The trail clubs encourage members to use the routes openly and notoriosly, to preserve the precedent that they public has and retains rights of way until and unless the landowners pursue an abandonment proceeding. The fact that the county doesn’t maintain the road for vehicular traffic does not mean that the road was conveyed to the adjoining landowner (who happens to own the parcels on both sides).
Alas, there was one landowner who won his battle. There was an incident where shots were fired on a party of hikers. While nobody was hurt, the club decided to close the trail (at the cost of adding a couple of miles of road walk) in the interest of hiker safety. Since nobody was able to identify who fired the shots, the landowner got away without any charges filed.
But I suppose that the whole concept of public rights of way is evil socialism.
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I once spent Midsummer’s Night on the summit of a rocky hill/mountain/monroe with a large group of people…the summit in question is on Balmoral land, but because of the ancient right of way, the Queen herself has to allow peasants access to that hill.
Quite a civilized country in many ways. Too bad they’re still stuck with their southern neighbors. (I kid, I kid!)
Various European countries have tried it. This article talks about it.
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I’ve read that Sweden does this, and that indeed some nouveau riche tech wunderkind there did get dinged for nearly $100,000 for a major speeding ticket.
In Germany, court-induced fines are often measured in Tagessätze, which means days of income. For example, you might be fined 30 days’ income, which might mean a month’s pay check for some working guy, or thirty days worth of what a rich guy gets from his investments, interest and whatnot. This being Germany, the rules defining how to measure a day’s worth of income are written in laws and regulations, and not left to legal precedent.
Still, some rich arses will fight it in court long after the battle is lost, because part of being wealthy seems to be not accepting that the world exists to serve your whims. De Nile and whatnot.
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This has been covered at least twice here, previously, on the Boing, if anybody is curious to read previous discussions about it:
Thanks for linking across. It looks like those are the only two related stories about Khosla on BB, but they aren’t covering this specific story. This is a newly updated story from the most recent law suit. (Note the different outcome.)
There are several law suits against Khosla, and as I wrote above - there’s also a bill that’s now on the Governor’s desk to use eminent domain to gain control of the road through the land. The legal battles all started back in 2012, and they’re all using different arguments.
I was pretty sure this was the outcome of the second link I posted - which is talking about the Surfrider lawsuit. Unless Surfrider is suing him multiple times?
There’s more than one lawsuit from the Surfrider Foundation. This is a second suit. Khosla won the first suit based on the pre-California nature of the property’s deed. I think I already linked to this article, but here it is again.
This second suit focuses on the California Coastal Act, a relatively new law passed in 1976. Khosla wants to claim that his land is not covered by California law - even as new laws are adopted into the state which accepted the deed that was granted prior to the formation of the state.
It makes for an interesting legal argument. Can someone claim that their “grandfathered” property is allowed to ignore surrounding law in perpetuity? The argument being made is, “Not if the owner wants to make any changes to it.”
It is from common law. You cannot close off passage that has been used for more than seven years. Also, in the bad old days when ships were lost at sea, the survivors had the right to passage from what ever beach they were tossed upon.
The beach isn’t his property. That beach was used by the public for years before Mr. Rich Man decided to block access to it.
He’s not claiming the beach is his property. The road that leads to the beach IS his property, though.
You cannot close off access that has been free/public for seven years. By charging fees in the past, it bypassed that requirement (or should have).
I know this from, well, second-hand experience. Friends of mine own property where there’s a landlocked tract of land, and a private road through their property to the landlocked tract. They closed the road twice a year for 48 hours specifically to keep their rights intact, and have also charged a small nominal fee at the same time, for the same reason.
The biggest problem with Martin’s Beach is that it is closed on each side by steep cliffs. The current road (Martin’s Beach Rd.) runs smack dab through the middle of Khosla’s property. There’s not really another good place to put an easement, and any new road would still tie to the existing road at the shore.
The California Conservancy has set up a way for citizens (typically private trusts or non-profits) rather than the government to provide the maintenance funding for an easement with shore access. It’s called an “Offer to Dedicate” (OTD). Since Martin’s Beach Rd. is already built, this might be a way to handle this mess neatly. An OTD lets a person deed their property over for beach access and put the cost on those who desire the access, but it must developed and maintained, or the deed will revert. This would probably be the happiest resolution for all involved. After all, the beach technically does not fall under CA Const. law, but it was used as a public beach (paying for parking -which pays to maintain a parking lot and road - isn’t the same as paying for access to a closed location) since the 1930s.
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