Unless I miss something, having this type of local news on the Hacker News homepage is surprising.
IMHO, it falls under the category of "boat programming" (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14486/174092). That is, it is only thanks to the "Bay Area woman" that it grabbed some attention of the Bay Area-affiliated crowd (if it was a "Budapest woman", it would be treated, factfully, as local news).
In particular, it falls short of the HN guidelines of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
I have no ties to the bay area, I upvoted it because the mistake was a classic off by one error.
> “Mr. Lawrence testified he built the home on Lot 114 instead of Lot 115 because he counted out the lots using the telephone poles,” the court order read. “But he built the home on the wrong side of the telephone pole.”
I have no affiliation to either locality, but I thought this whole saga was interesting from a legal perspective. The sheer audacity of the developer to sue for unjust enrichment. I think it also would have been a pretty important case if it hadn't gone this way, as others pointed out, it would have opened a lot of potential avenues for developers to abuse neighbors or steal land.
Reasonable parties would have found a way to come to an amicable agreement that wouldn’t have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of value, like exchanging lands and offering compensation.
Edit: changed dollar value, thanks Ballas for correcting me
> wouldn’t have destroyed millions of dollars of value,
Did you see the photo? It’s a small house that definitely did not cost “millions” to build. The $5 million is in the lot, which they were trying to take from her via courts.
The value of the lot comes from the location and the view, which are not easily replaceable in a place like Hawaii, even from one adjacent lot to the next. I bet the house could be destroyed with negligible change of the value of the property, if any at all. So nobody is destroying “millions of dollars of value” in this situation.
Regardless, can you imagine the implications if a developer could just build on whatever lot they wanted and then the owner had to be forced to accept some other land in exchange? If that was true, I guarantee a lot of other developers would start “accidentally” building on nicer lots too.
I think the "reasonable" solution GP is after would be to just allow the land owner to keep the house, if she so desired.
Given her plans for the land however, I can see why she wouldn't be interested in that.
Basically there are 2 reasonable solutions as I see it, the one described above, and the one that actually happened per the article.
The developer suing her for being "unjustly enriched" is just pure madness. Had they not done that, they might've gotten away without having to pay for the demolition at least, if the landowner didn't object too harshly to a "free house" deal.
Which totally should've been the landowners call of course.
There seems to be a mistake in the article, if you click on the linked article [0], it states the home was listed for $499,000. She bought the land for $22,500 and they claimed that they paid $300,000 for construction.
There weren't two reasonable parties involved or else there never would've been a house built on land someone else owns. That is not a reasonable mistake. Unless millions of dollars of investment is pocket change, in which case losing that entire investment is also nothing for the offending party. Given that millions of dollars is substantial for the offending party then they weren't acting anywhere close to reasonable.
I don't feel there is a shred of responsibility for the offended party to try and make reasonable accommodations for another party acting so unreasonable.
I don't feel any sympathy for the developer either: I feel bad for the trees that had to be cut down, the materials that had to be mined and processed, the heavy machinery that had to be moved to that location and burn gallons of fuel, the workers that had to spend their time building it all. All that will be destroyed, some valuable materials will be recycled but the bulk will be dumped in a landfill somewhere. Just the waste of it all. And just because some developer, the city, and many other parties along the way couldn't exercise due diligence. And at the end, there was so much spite between the party that no one could come to an agreement that allowed this building to stand.
Yup, what's unreasonable is the developer trying to litigate away the risks that they made themselves. Companies need to bear the brunt of their own self-inflicted FAFO.
Sounds like a reasonable judgement - even if the parties didn't come to a compromise themselves - would have been to just swap lots. Lots 115 should be empty, cause the building that should be there is on 114. So, swap the deeds and be done with it.
(Unless lot 115 is completely different to 114, but doesn't sound that way)
That sort of precedent seems like it will just lead to abuse. Buy a less desirable plot of land, 'accidentally' build on a nicer plot near by, force the owner of the nicer plot to hand over their land to you (Since they're just a bit different and not "completely different").
That is reasonable ONLY if the party who owns the lot is willing to trade (possibly with some extra compensation for their trouble). However I see not reason to expect someone to trade their land just because someone else wants to.
> Reynolds was in for yet another unwelcome surprise: The developer sued her for being “unjustly enriched” by the construction of the home on her land. The developers’ lawyer told SFGATE in March that Reynolds appeared to be taking advantage of the developer’s mistake. “Keaau Development Partnership is the only entity that has suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of losses,” Peter Olson said. “She’s trying to exploit the situation to get money from my client and the other parties.”
Can you imagine if this had worked? If someone could screw up so badly as to build an entire house on land they had no authorization to build on, and sue the owner of that land? Who didn't even know it was happening until it was over?
I can think of a long line of people the builder might have a case against here, but suing someone with the argument, "I unjustly enriched you. Give me money," is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile.
Unjust enrichment is mostly supposed to be if you knew they were doing work at your place when they weren't supposed to be.
Say your neighbor pays to redo their backyard. Install a big outdoor kitchen, install a fancy pool with a water slide, etc.
They mix up which yard is which. You see them come into your yard and start digging. You think "maybe I should stop them..." but don't. Instead, you let them build out a $100,000 backyard setup in your yard over the next week.
You could have stopped them. You were there. The construction workers saw you were home and saw you leave and come back several times during the week. There's no doubt you were aware of the unpaid construction work being done. Instead, you waited until all the work was completed.
In this case there's practically little way this owner, who lived over 2,000mi away from the property, would have reasonably known this construction was happening. This is why that case was thrown out.
Ironically, in the mail, we have protections for that. By law, you may keep unsolicited merchandise and are under no obligation to pay for it.
Thus: I consider the contractor to be a private courier that delivered a building upon my land. I didn't solicit this merchandise (house), and I'm not paying for it.
There's practically no way to know someone is going to mess up your address. You can't be liable for that.
If you're living at a place (or spend a lot of time there) you'd have seen the workers working at your place. Catching them mid job and letting them know right away wouldn't result in unjust enrichment. Letting someone build a whole house on your property while you knew about it would be unjust enrichment.
Unjust enrichment makes sense in different contexts.
Dine and Dash doesn’t involve a formal written contract, but the implication of sitting down in a restaurant is clear.
One of my neighbors let a family member build a house on their property without explicitly gifting them the land and you can see the inherent conflict involved when the land owner knows and approves what’s going on.
> “Mr. Lawrence testified he built the home on Lot 114 instead of Lot 115 because he counted out the lots using the telephone poles,” the court order read. “But he built the home on the wrong side of the telephone pole.”
Had he been a programmer he would know to count from 0 :)
This scenario happens far more often than most people realise, putting up a building on the wrong plot of land. If you are not going to do your due diligence then you will suffer the consequences.
If you build on the wrong plot, the only person to blame is yourself.
And certainly more minor property line disputes happen all the time--including situations where the infringement probably seems inconsequential relative to the heat it sometimes causes.
Certainly. My middle son was looking at buying a property in a near by town. He asked me to come an look at it. We had the actual shire plans for the blocks and while looking at the property lines, we measured the actual fence to fence widths. The block was being sold by the owner of an adjoining block and when we measured we found that the fence line had been moved by about 20 to 30 cm. On querying the owner about this, he was somewhat angry that we were questioning where the fence was as he was the one who had it built.
From what I could see, the builders most likely kicked the boundary peg out of the ground and just put it back willy nilly.
As a consequence, I did advise my son to have nothing to do with the property and we did inform the real estate agent of the problem. This would put legal responsibility on the estate agent if it was sold without the boundary line being corrected.
Due diligence is necessary if you are doing this kind of thing.
I remember looking at a farm property in NC. After walking the entire farm I noticed that someone had built a home on the wrong side of a creek on the farmland, instead of the other side of the creek on the land they actually owned. I notified the sellers who after talking to the county found out I was correct. They ended up having to change the lot lines. We ended up not buying the property due to other reasons. It is truly amazing to me that things like this get past the banks and county inspectors. The lack of due diligence is astounding.
Readit News
Funny enough, Mountain View is right down the road from there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Hawaii
Way better farmers market, too.
IMHO, it falls under the category of "boat programming" (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14486/174092). That is, it is only thanks to the "Bay Area woman" that it grabbed some attention of the Bay Area-affiliated crowd (if it was a "Budapest woman", it would be treated, factfully, as local news).
In particular, it falls short of the HN guidelines of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
> “Mr. Lawrence testified he built the home on Lot 114 instead of Lot 115 because he counted out the lots using the telephone poles,” the court order read. “But he built the home on the wrong side of the telephone pole.”
Edit: changed dollar value, thanks Ballas for correcting me
Did you see the photo? It’s a small house that definitely did not cost “millions” to build. The $5 million is in the lot, which they were trying to take from her via courts.
The value of the lot comes from the location and the view, which are not easily replaceable in a place like Hawaii, even from one adjacent lot to the next. I bet the house could be destroyed with negligible change of the value of the property, if any at all. So nobody is destroying “millions of dollars of value” in this situation.
Regardless, can you imagine the implications if a developer could just build on whatever lot they wanted and then the owner had to be forced to accept some other land in exchange? If that was true, I guarantee a lot of other developers would start “accidentally” building on nicer lots too.
Given her plans for the land however, I can see why she wouldn't be interested in that.
Basically there are 2 reasonable solutions as I see it, the one described above, and the one that actually happened per the article.
The developer suing her for being "unjustly enriched" is just pure madness. Had they not done that, they might've gotten away without having to pay for the demolition at least, if the landowner didn't object too harshly to a "free house" deal.
Which totally should've been the landowners call of course.
[0] https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-home-built-on-w...
I don't feel there is a shred of responsibility for the offended party to try and make reasonable accommodations for another party acting so unreasonable.
The county granted a flawed permit. The builder built on the wrong site. The new buyer skipped a formal survey.
There's a web of lawsuits that have to play out in courts to seek insurance or pass through of damages.
(Unless lot 115 is completely different to 114, but doesn't sound that way)
Can you imagine if this had worked? If someone could screw up so badly as to build an entire house on land they had no authorization to build on, and sue the owner of that land? Who didn't even know it was happening until it was over?
I can think of a long line of people the builder might have a case against here, but suing someone with the argument, "I unjustly enriched you. Give me money," is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in awhile.
Just imagine the precedent.
Say your neighbor pays to redo their backyard. Install a big outdoor kitchen, install a fancy pool with a water slide, etc.
They mix up which yard is which. You see them come into your yard and start digging. You think "maybe I should stop them..." but don't. Instead, you let them build out a $100,000 backyard setup in your yard over the next week.
You could have stopped them. You were there. The construction workers saw you were home and saw you leave and come back several times during the week. There's no doubt you were aware of the unpaid construction work being done. Instead, you waited until all the work was completed.
In this case there's practically little way this owner, who lived over 2,000mi away from the property, would have reasonably known this construction was happening. This is why that case was thrown out.
Ironically, in the mail, we have protections for that. By law, you may keep unsolicited merchandise and are under no obligation to pay for it.
Thus: I consider the contractor to be a private courier that delivered a building upon my land. I didn't solicit this merchandise (house), and I'm not paying for it.
If you're living at a place (or spend a lot of time there) you'd have seen the workers working at your place. Catching them mid job and letting them know right away wouldn't result in unjust enrichment. Letting someone build a whole house on your property while you knew about it would be unjust enrichment.
Dine and Dash doesn’t involve a formal written contract, but the implication of sitting down in a restaurant is clear.
One of my neighbors let a family member build a house on their property without explicitly gifting them the land and you can see the inherent conflict involved when the land owner knows and approves what’s going on.
Had he been a programmer he would know to count from 0 :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-by-one_error#Fencepost_err...
If you build on the wrong plot, the only person to blame is yourself.
From what I could see, the builders most likely kicked the boundary peg out of the ground and just put it back willy nilly.
As a consequence, I did advise my son to have nothing to do with the property and we did inform the real estate agent of the problem. This would put legal responsibility on the estate agent if it was sold without the boundary line being corrected.
Due diligence is necessary if you are doing this kind of thing.