Back in 2014, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg paid $100 million for 700 acres of land in Kauai, Hawaii; now the social media billionaire is suing over one hundred native families who lay claim to several portions of the estate located in Kauai’s North Shore, HawaiiNewsNow reports.
With a net worth of $44.6 billion according to Forbes, Zuckerberg bought the estate back then to provide privacy for his family and is not in the mood to contest the land with any native family who has inheritance claims over tracts of the estate.
It is common practice in Hawaii for families to possess small tracts of lands within larger estates belonging to some other persons, and these portions of lands are often passed from generations to generations before reaching the current owner. Most of these inherited lands lacked proper deeds or official documentations, while several stakeholders in the lands are either dead or even unaware of their claims.
But where native families arise to lay claims to such lands within larger tracts of purchased estates, the owner of the larger estate has to pay off the native families or institute a legal action that could cost each party to the case up to $200,000.
Keoni Shultz, one of the representatives of Zuckerberg on the contested estate revealed that the Facebook billionaire is not willing to contest land ownership with native families or co-owners who could provide real official documentations to their claims, while he wouldn’t mind going to courts with others who are not able to do this.
If Zuckerberg wins in court, then native families laying claims to lands will have no choice but to sell to Zuckerberg or some other top bidders at a public auction. How this imbroglio will eventually play out remains to be seen but the courts will decide on how to proceed with the issue since the case has now been filed at the appropriate Hawaiian courts.