5 ms·

Hawaii home mistakenly built on Bay Area woman's land to be torn down

39 points by Stratoscope 2y ago

Detrytus 2y ago
> “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 :)
- prashp 2y ago
  Maybe he programmed in Octave/MATLAB
- prox 2y ago
  Or : measure twice, cut once for all us woodworkers.
- nextaccountic 2y ago
  More about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-by-one_error#Fencepost_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-by-one_error#Fencepost_err...
- klabb3 2y ago
  Yet another tragic victim of 1-indexing. But nothing tops Jesus, born in year 1.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
robnado 2y ago
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
- fnord77 2y ago
  Why do you assume they didn't try that?
- caminante 2y ago
  Not realistic. 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.
- sgift 2y ago
  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)
  - dagw 2y ago
    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").
    - sgift 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure judges can reasonably find the difference between willfulness and accident (as the article states, multiple people who had no reason to help the builder missed the error) and decide accordingly.
      - dagw 2y ago
        But why should you be rewarded for your fuckup by taking my land from me? Why should I be punished for doing nothing wrong by being forced to take a possibly lesser plot of land.
  - 2y ago
alexb_ 2y ago
[flagged]
- rcthompson 2y ago
  Are you arguing that property rights should be based exclusively on calling "dibs" by building something on the land? If I see someone not using their front lawn, should I build my own house in front of theirs and tell them that I'll make better use of the land?
  - alexb_ 2y ago
    No, land rights (NOT property rights, you should be entitled to all of the value you produce) should be determined by a market system. I'm fine with her keeping that multi-million dollar plot of land for herself, but only if she actually pays society for everything being taken away. A tax on the value of land - something people didn't produce, but comes from the value of society - is the proper way to raise income. You get rid of speculative leeches like this.
    - arwineap 2y ago
      Even if we pretend for a moment that georgism is possible, works, and was magically implemented tomorrow You still can't build on the wrong plot and sell it.
      - francisofascii 2y ago
        Yeah, true. But if Georgism was in place I would think you would have less people owning prime property but living 2000 miles away and completely unaware what is happening on the land.
      - jonfw 2y ago
        If georgism was implemented here, then the value of the lot would have increased very significantly with a house was on it. With the significant additional value, it's likely that the two parties would have been able to come to an arrangement that didn't result in destroying the house. The root of the problem here is that the house is worth peanuts compared to the land, so the homeowner has nothing to gain from bargaining with the developer. We end up destroying something of value (housing) in the name of speculative land investment, which is a shame
smeej 2y ago
> 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. Just imagine the precedent.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  > I unjustly enriched you, give me money 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.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    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.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    That only applies if it was addressed to you though. If the mail was addressed to your neighbor and delivered to you then you don't get to keep it.
- emilecantin 2y ago
elromulous 2y ago
The title almost makes it sound like the house was mistakenly built in the bay area instead of Hawaii.
- ramesh31 2y ago
  >The title almost makes it sound like the house was mistakenly built in the bay area instead of Hawaii. Funny enough, Mountain View is right down the road from there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Hawaii https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Hawaii Way better farmers market, too.
oldandtired 2y ago
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.
- ghaff 2y ago
  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.
  - oldandtired 2y ago
    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.
nmeofthestate 2y ago
I'm reminded of the old saying "Measure twice, build entire friggin house once."
jmclnx 2y ago
>But the judge rejected a request that the land be restored to its original condition. from https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2024/06/26/hawaii-island-judge-orders-demolition-500000-house-built-wrong-lot/ https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2024/06/26/hawaii-island-judge... I think that is a shame and Reynold will get justice in the next trail. To me, the land should be restored to what it was before the work began.
stared 2y ago
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 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".
- lolinder 2y ago
  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.”
  - buggeryorkshire 2y ago
    I do love the way you segue this into tech territory by pointing out it is indeed a classic off by 1 error. Bravo
- jdyer9 2y ago
  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.
uslic001 2y ago
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.
vaadu 2y ago
Lehto's Law discussed this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntxd2jsszi0&pp=ygULbGVodG8ncyBsYXc%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntxd2jsszi0&pp=ygULbGVodG8nc... The builder didn't help himself by suing everyone before trying to work it out.

39 points by Stratoscope 2y ago

> “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 :)

prashp 2y ago
Maybe he programmed in Octave/MATLAB
prox 2y ago
Or : measure twice, cut once for all us woodworkers.
nextaccountic 2y ago
More about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-by-one_error#Fencepost_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-by-one_error#Fencepost_err...
klabb3 2y ago
Yet another tragic victim of 1-indexing. But nothing tops Jesus, born in year 1.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

robnado 2y ago

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

fnord77 2y ago
Why do you assume they didn't try that?
caminante 2y ago
Not realistic. 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.
sgift 2y ago
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)
- dagw 2y ago
  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").
  - sgift 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure judges can reasonably find the difference between willfulness and accident (as the article states, multiple people who had no reason to help the builder missed the error) and decide accordingly.
    - dagw 2y ago
      But why should you be rewarded for your fuckup by taking my land from me? Why should I be punished for doing nothing wrong by being forced to take a possibly lesser plot of land.
- 2y ago

alexb_ 2y ago

[flagged]

rcthompson 2y ago
Are you arguing that property rights should be based exclusively on calling "dibs" by building something on the land? If I see someone not using their front lawn, should I build my own house in front of theirs and tell them that I'll make better use of the land?
- alexb_ 2y ago
  No, land rights (NOT property rights, you should be entitled to all of the value you produce) should be determined by a market system. I'm fine with her keeping that multi-million dollar plot of land for herself, but only if she actually pays society for everything being taken away. A tax on the value of land - something people didn't produce, but comes from the value of society - is the proper way to raise income. You get rid of speculative leeches like this.
  - arwineap 2y ago
    Even if we pretend for a moment that georgism is possible, works, and was magically implemented tomorrow You still can't build on the wrong plot and sell it.
    - francisofascii 2y ago
      Yeah, true. But if Georgism was in place I would think you would have less people owning prime property but living 2000 miles away and completely unaware what is happening on the land.
    - jonfw 2y ago
      If georgism was implemented here, then the value of the lot would have increased very significantly with a house was on it. With the significant additional value, it's likely that the two parties would have been able to come to an arrangement that didn't result in destroying the house. The root of the problem here is that the house is worth peanuts compared to the land, so the homeowner has nothing to gain from bargaining with the developer. We end up destroying something of value (housing) in the name of speculative land investment, which is a shame

smeej 2y ago

> 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. Just imagine the precedent.

kotaKat 2y ago
> I unjustly enriched you, give me money 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.
- vel0city 2y ago
  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.
- bluGill 2y ago
  That only applies if it was addressed to you though. If the mail was addressed to your neighbor and delivered to you then you don't get to keep it.
emilecantin 2y ago

elromulous 2y ago

The title almost makes it sound like the house was mistakenly built in the bay area instead of Hawaii.

ramesh31 2y ago
>The title almost makes it sound like the house was mistakenly built in the bay area instead of Hawaii. Funny enough, Mountain View is right down the road from there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Hawaii https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_Hawaii Way better farmers market, too.

oldandtired 2y ago

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.

ghaff 2y ago
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.
- oldandtired 2y ago
  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.

nmeofthestate 2y ago

I'm reminded of the old saying "Measure twice, build entire friggin house once."

jmclnx 2y ago

>But the judge rejected a request that the land be restored to its original condition. from https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2024/06/26/hawaii-island-judge-orders-demolition-500000-house-built-wrong-lot/ https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2024/06/26/hawaii-island-judge... I think that is a shame and Reynold will get justice in the next trail. To me, the land should be restored to what it was before the work began.

stared 2y ago

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 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".

lolinder 2y ago
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.”
- buggeryorkshire 2y ago
  I do love the way you segue this into tech territory by pointing out it is indeed a classic off by 1 error. Bravo
jdyer9 2y ago
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.

uslic001 2y ago

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.

vaadu 2y ago

Lehto's Law discussed this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntxd2jsszi0&pp=ygULbGVodG8ncyBsYXc%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntxd2jsszi0&pp=ygULbGVodG8nc... The builder didn't help himself by suing everyone before trying to work it out.