[Excel_Wizard]

Living in a state that respects property rights has benefits. When you know that your state respects other individuals' property rights, you know it's less likely that they will trample your rights as well.

The case hinges on the previous landowner performing "public dedication" of the road by letting people use it. The concept of "public dedication" without the previous owners of the land creating any legal documentation, and possibly unaware of the legal consequences, that they are willingly performing public dedication of the road is absurd.

[nothal]

I wish I could find the resource I read but common law paths and easements have existed for a long time and it's not absurd that long-standing tradition can reflect intent or legal obligation. Domestic marriage after a certain number of years is one example.

[aetherson]

Note that there is no common law marriage in California.

The question of whether this dude's property rights do or ought to trump public access to the beach is a detailed point of law, and, I mean, clearly is not as black and white as some posters are making out (neither side trivially prevailed in a summary judgment through the courts). But this subthread is not whether the case was decided correctly on its merits, but whether people who think that Khosla should be able to fence access to the beach through his property are deluded idiots who wrongly imagine that they will someday own beaches themselves, and are agitating for this particular wholly imaginary self-interest, or whether they might have other reasons to believe as they do.