Facebook has reached just about every corner of the earth, making Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, an extremely rich and famous man, to say the least. However, Zuckerberg recently became embroiled in something other than technology and social media endeavors.
Filing Hundreds of Lawsuits
It was right around Christmas that Zuckerberg shared photographs of his family’s $100 million, 700-acre property in Kauai, Hawaii, writing that he and his wife “fell in love with the community and the cloudy green mountains.” However, that kind depiction of his plan to join the Kauai community fell in sharp contrast with what Zuckerberg did just two days later. His lawyers filed lawsuits against hundreds of his new neighbors in Hawaii and all recipients were served papers regarding the “quiet title” suits.
It seems that as ownership of land in Kauai has become more fractured, many Hawaiians aren’t even aware that they own or have a claim to parcels of land. By undergoing the “quiet title” lawsuit process, Zuckerberg can determine the identity of all people who might rightfully own land to which he has laid claim.
For It and Against It
There are always two sides to every story. According to Zuckerberg, his decision to launch these lawsuits as a good-faith effort “to find all these partial owners so we can pay them their fair share.” Many Hawaiians, however, see Zuckerberg has “the face of neocolonialism” and worry that they will be forced to sell their land at auction or even pay Zuckerberg’s legal fees despite his status as the world’s fifth richest man.
As a law professor at the University of Hawaii xplained, “For us, Native Hawaiians, the land is an ancestor. It’s a grandparent. You don’t just sell your grandmother. Even though a forced sale may not physically displace people, it’s the last nail in the coffin of separating us from the land.”
Matt Goodale, whose 10 acres of banana, mango, longan, lychee, and breadfruit trees are only one and a half miles from Zuckerberg’s property, came to the billionaire’s defense. According to Goodale, if Zuckerberg hadn’t bought the land, it would have been transformed into an 80-home development. “His current actions show that he is trying to do the right thing,” Goodale explained.
