Category Archives: Hawaiian issues

Dispute over Molokai mule rides makes NYT

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Did you notice that a brief AP story on the dispute over the commercial mule rides down the steep trail to Kalaupapa made the pages of the New York Times this week?

The story ran on Monday (“Mule Tour Company Evicted From Molokai’s Kalaupapa Peninsula“).

From the reporting, it’s a little hard to get a fix on the issues.

Here’s what KHON reported over the weekend.

The heart of the issue is land ownership, with both sides saying they are the rightful owners.

“We own the land. R.W. Meyer does. We have deeds that go back to when we first purchased lands in 1800s,” said Paul Meyer president of R.W. Meyer Ltd.

Kalehua Sproat-Augustiro’s family has run the mule rides for decades. According to her, the land belongs to her family.

“Molokai Mule Ride LLC operates the guided tours into Kalaupapa. our ohana holds the allodial title to the land that the business is on therefor, as true land holders, we are not responsible for paying rent to anyone,” Sproat-Augustiro said.

And there was the clue. That term, “allodial title,” has been a favorite of anti-tax scammers and anti-foreclosure schemes across the mainland for decades, and has been adopted by some Hawaiians because it references “land patents” which, according to the claims, are the highest form of land title.

The Maui News has had the top reporting on this business dispute (see Brian Perry’s story,”Molokai mule ride company evicted from trail land“).

Perry reported the mule ride company, Kalaupapa Adventures, stopped paying lease rent, and refused to negotiate terms of a new lease.

The timeline says that on Jan. 11, 2017, the Meyer company received an 11-page document from Kalaupapa Adventures, seeking $5 million in gold or silver and calling U.S. currency “Monopoly money.” The company disputed R.W. Meyer’s land ownership and made sovereignty claims, although Meyer is Native Hawaiian and has land deeds, the timeline says.

In March 2017, Kalaupapa Adventures files a second claim in land court, raising its demand from $5 million to $50 million; and, in July, a federal magistrate issued a finding that the tour company had failed to show it has rights to the Meyer land, the timeline says. And, after Kalaupapa Adventures filed a lawsuit against the Meyer company in December, a judge ruled against the plaintiff and issued a writ of possession in favor of the Meyer company, it says.

Findings in a federal court case describe a document submitted by Beatrice Sproat-Augustiro on behalf of Kalaupapa Rare Adventure LLC.

The title is a giveaway, a combination of buzzwords dear to those peddling discredited legal claims, including the references to admiralty law and international commercial claims.

“Commercial Notice of Amendment Petition and Complaint Within the Admiralty Pursuant to RCP #3 and #4 for the Petition for Agreement and Harmony in the Nature of a Notice of International Commercial Claim Within the Admiralty Administrative Remedy and Libel of Review and Entry of the Conclusive Evidence for Settlement and Closure of the Escrow by Commercial Affidavit Pleading in Fact and Points and Authorities and Memorandum of Law.”

This is not an isolated use of similar claims and legal tactics in Hawaii land (and debt) disputes. Courts, and the real estate industry, have tried to deal with these issues quietly, in order to avoid associated political issues and questions. There have been criminal prosecutions when the same claims and tactics are deployed by scammers who collect fees for their “assistance,” but it seems to me the claims need a more direct rebuttal to keep others from falling into the trap of believing they offer any real chance of relief.

Another perspective on the Waianae homeless village

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Supporters of Pu‘uhonua O Waianae, the homeless village next to the Waianae Small Boat Harbor, rallied at the State Capitol yesterday.

A recent story by Dan Nakaso captured the complexity of the issues with this homeless encampment (“Growing Waianae homeless camp at center of dispute at harbor“).

It’s a complicated issue. But a new video series hopes to add a human face to the debate.

Here are two short videos in what they hope will be a Voices of Pu’uhonua o Wai’anae series.

Additional information can be found on the group’s Facebook page.

Coco Palm activists threaten to have judge arrested

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Here’s my question. If those activists claiming to be able to prove their legal title to at least parts of the Coco Palms property on Kauai, why are they resorting to frivolous paper threats against the judge in the case?

On January 26, 2018, Noa Mau-Espirito and Charles Hepa filed a rambling document in the lawsuit that is seeking to eject them and their supporters from the Coco Palms property.

The single-page document is referred to as a “Default Judgement and Notice of Entry of Default Judgement” against Judge Soong, who is presiding over the ejectment case. It lists several “charges” against the judge and threatened to arrest him if the judge did not “surrender” within 48 hours.

It is stamped by “The Hawaiian Judiciary Court of the Sovereign” and signed by Moses Enoka Heanu as “Chief Justice, Court of the Sovereign.”

In a legal filing seeking to strike the memo from the court record, two deputy attorneys general representing Judge Soong describe the documents as “nonsensical–they contain legalistic gibberish and make threats of arrest without any merit.”

It’s hard to argue with that point of view.

And it isn’t the first time in this case that such frivolous filings have been made. Back in November, another filing claimed the defendants were “protected persons” under the Geneva Conventions.

Such filings undercut their publicly stated position that they have a valid legal claim to the property and, what’s worth, encourage the public to see all Hawaiian land claims as similarly bogus. In the long run, that’s the real damage done by resorting to such long-discredited tactics.

Be skeptical of those “Royal Patent” land claims

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“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

“The implication is that a small amount of knowledge can lead to overconfidence, leaping to invalid conclusions based on what you do know without taking into account the things that you don’t know. It’s contrasted with a large amount of knowledge, which would presumably lead one to be more cautious or to at least draw better conclusions.” Source: Quora.com

You can see this principle at work among many Hawaiian activists today.

Take the claims made about Royal Patents, land grants made during the Hawaiian monarchy.

Some activists appear to believe that once a Royal Patent was granted, it conveyed the property in perpetuity. A Royal Patent is the basis for the current occupation of site of the Coco Palms Hotel on Kauai.

Here’s one summary from the Garden Island Newspaper:

Mau-Espirito and his cousin, Kamuela Kapule O Kamehameha, say they have a royal patent called Palapala Sila Nui, which they say gives their family the rights to the land in perpetuity.

“Because my bloodline goes straight to Kaumualii, because Kamu’s bloodline goes straight to Kapule, we have vested rights and vested interests in this land that nobody can take away from us,” Mau-Espirito said. “Once a royal patent is made, it’s in that family’s name forever. All the kids in that bloodline will be able to come on this land.”

This belief that a Royal Patent gives the right to land in perpetuity is partially true. Only partially true because the same patent also includes the right for the owner to dispose of the land, to sell it, give it away, or otherwise transfer or assign it.

And a land patent would be granted to an individual, not to a family.

So the land remains “in the family’s name” only if the recipient of the original Royal Patent never transferred it to someone else, and the land was then handed down through inheritance within the family without being sold or transferred at any point.

In fact, modern land deeds contain a similar “perpetual” provision. For example, the deed for my own house says the right to the property was transferred “IN FEE SIMPLE, FOREVER.” The capitalization is in the original. However, it also grants “full powers to sell, convey, transfer, or otherwise dispose of….”

The idea of the perpetual land patent has provided fertile ground for con artists and frauds. Remember Mahealani Ventura-Oliver and her co-defendants, who were convicted of fraud and related offenses back in 2014?

…according to evidence produced in court, Ventura-Oliver and others were part of a group known as Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, the Registry and Hawaiiloa Foundation. Between 2008 and 2009, the group held weekly seminars on Maui, where Ventura-Oliver and others spoke about Hawaiian history and culture, and royal land patents. The evidence showed that, in return for the payment of a fee, the group offered to provide distressed homeowners with “bonds” and other documents that would pay off their mortgages and forestall collection efforts. The “bonds” purportedly directed the United States Treasury Department or the State of Hawaii Comptroller of the Currency to make payments on behalf of the homeowners….

At yesterday’s sentencing hearing, Judge Seabright said Ventura-Oliver portrayed herself as an expert in Hawaiian culture and history, and “sold herself as wanting to help Native Hawaiians.” The judge found that Ventura-Oliver actually knew that her program did not work but preyed on the vulnerabilities of her participants.

She is current serving her sentence in a federal facility in California, and is scheduled to be released in July 2019.

One question I have is this: Who is spreading the false belief that a Royal Patent lasts forever and allows a descendant of the original land recipient to state a claim on the property more than a century later, no matter what has transpired in the meantime? It’s obviously an attractive idea. My great-great-grandfather was granted about 16 acres in Hana back in the mid-19th century. According to the perpetual land grant theory, I would still have an interest in that property, presumably along with hundreds of “cousins” able to claim that common ancestor. Of course, anyone seeking to assert such a claim would find it a dead end.

Another Royal Patent was behind another land controversy when a group moved onto land owned by Kualoa Ranch and claimed they had title to several parcels originally granted to a distant ancestor. I wrote about this case back in 2015 (“Ian Lind: Land Dispute Goes Back to Hawaiian Kingdom Days“). Other land patent claims are more frivolous, such as the one involving a modern Royal Patent from one of the individuals claiming to represent the government of the “Hawaiian Kingdom” (see “Hawaii Monitor: Frivolous Claim Over Sovereignty Snags Homeowner“).

There can, of course, be valid historical property claims. But most of what you hear today about claims based on long-overlooked royal patents are legally baseless when examined closely.

And those claims of those occupying the Coco Palms property on Kauai? Check out Civil Beat’s latest story on the situation: “Coco Palms Developer Fights Back With Its Own Native Hawaiian Research.”