Vinod Khosla’s bitter battle to safeguard beach at his $37 million property nears verdict

Decision would impact beach-fronted house owners in California.

By Deepak Chitnis

WASHINGTON, DC: The end is near for Vinod Khosla and his bitter legal battle to keep a section of beach behind his California property closed off to the general public, despite such action allegedly being against the state’s laws.

Final arguments were scheduled to be heard on Wednesday in front of San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mallach, who will ultimately decide if Khosla has the ability to close off that section of the beach – which is essentially, for all intents and purposes, his backyard – or if such action violates the 38 year-old California Coastal Act.

Khosla’s beach-front home lies on Martin’s Beach, just about 30 miles to the west of San Jose. California law mandates that the state’s entire shoreline must be open to the public, part of the California Coastal Act and the California Coastal Zone Conservation Initiative.

When Khosla bought the 89-acre property in 2010, for a sum of over $37 million, he blocked off access to the beach, infuriating the local population who had flocked to the beach under the previous resident’s ownership.

California law has a loophole that allows access roads to be cut off to the public, but Khosla took the extra step of hiring guards to ensure that no one makes it onto the beach. This is what has apparently set people off, as even the previous owner allowed local denizens to enter the beach for a small fee, according to Reuters. Now, Khosla is defending his decision in court.

Khosla has argued that the closing off of the beach was done by Steven Baugher, who manages security for Khosla’s property. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Khosla’s lawyer, Jeffrey E. Essner has asserted that his client’s property is “not a state park,” and that “The threat of an activist organization to impose tens of millions of dollars in fines [is] the type of blackmail and extortion that the U.S. Supreme Court has found unconstitutional.”

Implications will be statewide regardless of how the case turns out, dealing a huge blow to beach-front property owners if Khosla loses or giving them a huge victory if he wins. The verdict will likely come by the end of this week.