Squash the wrong bug, go to jail The price of selling your home in Santa Barbara? An illegal warrantless search. Free speech wins one in California legislature! Brief filed in Oklahoma First Amendment right to say who you are case Oral argument in Florida takings case Allies file amicus briefs in support of our bird … ...
Surfrider Foundation has been battling Vinod Khosla in the California courts for several years, trying to force him to allow the public to cross his private property and use his private beach. We’ve written before about the myths and realities of that dispute–of which there are many. In August, a unanimous court of appeal panel … ...
The San Francisco Daily Journal published my op-ed today on last week’s California Court of Appeal decision in the Friends of Martin’s Beach case. As I have written before, in this case an advocacy group sued property owner Vinod Khosla claiming that the public is entitled to cross his property to reach the beach. The group relied ...
Should the public have the right to cross private property simply because it is next to a navigable water body? The California Court of Appeal may decide just that when it takes up the ongoing controversy over access to Martins Beach. As we have blogged about before, for decades the owners of the coastal property … ...
Yesterday, a San Mateo Superior Court judge issued a stunning tentative ruling in one of the two Martins Beach lawsuits pending against coastal landowner Vinod Khosla. The judge concluded that the decision to disallow the public to trespass onto private property–after allowing the public to do so for a fee–constitutes “de ...
On Sunday, the Sacramento Bee published my opinion editorial on the Martins Beach controversy, including legislative efforts to cow one landowner into giving up his property rights. PLF attorneys are following the dispute closely, and they will support the property owner as a friend-of-the-court in an appeal from a San Mateo Superior Court ruling t ...
One of California’s most controversial land-use disputes is over Martins Beach, in Half Moon Bay. The fight is over public access to the popular beach–and whether one man’s private property rights can survive a fierce backlash from well-funded and powerful interests groups. I wrote about the facts of the case here. The contr ...
There’s a big legal battle brewing along the San Mateo County coast that PLF is closely monitoring. Two radical, anti-property-rights groups are trying to force owners to open up their private land to the public, so that the public has easier access to a popular beach area known as Martins Beach. Here’s the backstory: … ...
I will be a guest on KQED Public Radio’s Forum on Monday, February 10, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. KQED is San Francisco’s NPR affiliate, which broadcasts throughout Northern California. Listen on 88.5 FM or Comcast channel 960 in San Francisco, 89.3 FM in Sacramento, 88.3 FM in Santa Rosa and 88.1 FM in Martinez. We’ll ̷ ...