Vinod Khosla calls dibs on California beach, lands in legal battle

India-born Vinod Khosla and the people of California are at loggerheads over access to a beach. The billionaire venture capitalist has been fighting a legal battle to keep people away from his private beach in California. But for the residents of the state, the beach is public property, which no one can lay claim to. An SF Gate report quotes lobbyists hired by Khosla, explaining the tangle: “Martin’s beach is private property, including the sandy beach and the submerged tidelands seaward of the mean high tide. There are no existing ‘public’ lands to which access is needed.” [caption id=“attachment_1089401” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Vinod Khosla. Agencies[/caption] His opponents have contended that Khosla’s demand of disallowing the public from the beach goes against the state’s constitution. The issue snowballed into a legal tiff after Khosla erected gates preventing people from accessing the beach. Khosla, who owns the adjacent land has shut off access for all as the only route to enter the beach goes through there. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The Surfrider Foundation has sued Khosla, contending that his actions (or those of his two limited liability companies) — barring the gate, painting over a billboard that had long welcomed the public and hiring security guards to fend off trespassers — changed the “intensity of use” of the beach and thus required a coastal development permit.”