AN EQUINE-ASSISTED PSYCHOTHERAPIST, a renowned organic farmer, and a Rockefeller are 34 people in a bizarre real estate case that could delay Google’s long-awaited Silicon Valley expansion.
The suit centers around the disputed ownership of four small roadway patches in San Jose, where Google wants to build a futuristic campus for tens of thousands of workers. But the origin of the legal battle stretches back to just before the Civil War.
In February 1861, three men bought 300 acres of farmland adjoining San Jose. Frederick Billings was a lawyer who led the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Archibald Peachy had come to California as a prospector during the Gold Rush before becoming a developer and politician.
The most famous of the three, Henry Morris Naglee, was known as the “father of Californian brandy” for planting vineyards in the area and later served as a union general during the Civil War.
The men called their purchase Rancho de Los Coches (“Ranch of the Carriages”) and eventually platted and subdivided it. But when they sold off some roadside lots, they took the unusual step of ending the parcels at the curbside. The roadways between the lots still belonged to Billings, Peachy, and Naglee.
Time passed, and San Jose prospered. Houses replaced farms, and Rancho de Los Coches was gradually absorbed into the growing city. Streets were constructed, and a narrow-gauge railyard evolved into Diridon Station, soon a central transportation hub. Around it popped up industrial buildings, followed by parking lots and retail in the automotive age.
In 2014, with the run-down area at odds with Silicon Valley’s spotless campuses, San Jose implemented a development plan that envisioned a high-density urban village with offices, residences, and community facilities.
It was just the opportunity Google had been waiting for. The company began buying up properties and, in 2019, proposed an 80-acre mixed-use neighborhood called Downtown West. Downtown West would provide office space for 20,000 Googlers, house residents and nonprofits, and add hotel rooms, a conference center, and 15 acres of plazas, parks, and trails to the city. The San Jose City Council unanimously approved the multibillion-dollar project last June.
One problem was four unsold parcels of roadway left over from Billings, Peachy, and Naglee’s subdivision over 150 years earlier.
Two of the parcels are long and skinny—measuring about an acre. Google hopes to build a parking structure beneath one. The third, on what is now Barack Obama Boulevard, is a tenth of an acre. The fourth in a dusty dead end is only as big as four ping-pong tables. The legal status of all four plots is murky.
Google points to sections of the California civil code as confirmation that it, or possibly the city of San Jose, owns the parcels, bike lanes, parking spots, and asphalt. But the company remains worried about legal challenges from beyond the grave.
“Writing up legal descriptions was far less of a science back in the day,” says Nanci Klein, director of real estate for the city. “To my knowledge, Google’s extensive historical research did not yield anyone who could meet the criteria of controlling the property.”
Nevertheless, Google set about tracking down the original owner’s families. In February, it sent letters to 115 possible descendants of the three men, including Peter Adams, a product manager at a data center technology firm in Washington. Google believes Adams could be a remote descendant of Archibald Peachy, via Peachy’s son-in-law’s niece’s husband’s nephew.
In its letter to Adams, Google wrote that it was “in the process of cleaning up the title” to the San Jose roads and that it would pay Adams a “courtesy fee” if he filed a quitclaim deed that surrendered his rights and interest in the property and kept the deal strictly confidential. According to one legal expert, the $5,000 offered was almost an insult; another defendant described it as “a meaningless sum” in a court filing. Commercial plots in San Jose have recently sold for $2 million an acre or more—albeit for traditional lots not cobbled together from roads and alleyways.
While most of those 115 descendants signed the quitclaim deed, Adams did not. Nor, presumably, did 33 other potential heirs to the original men. So Google sued them in a “quiet title” lawsuit. (Mark Zuckerberg used similar lawsuits to secure control of a 700-acre estate in Hawaii in 2017.)
“For Google to proceed with its development plans for the Project, fee title in the Subject Properties must be perfected in Google,” reads a lawsuit filed by Google and the City of San Jose in the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, in April.
Several Frederick Billings’ descendants are still prominent, including a few who married into the Rockefeller family. Many of the defendants can claim direct descent from Peachy and Naglee. None of those contacted by WIRED wanted to comment on the case.
Others are proving trickier to track down. In May, Google and San Jose admitted in a filing that “despite reasonable diligence, [they] had been unable to find addresses or locations for several defendants” and asked the court for extra time to serve their summons.
To complicate matters, Adams filed a countersuit in Santa Clara in early May—later joined by five other of the men’s descendants—demanding that the court confirm their ownership of the two larger parcels. Google would not answer questions related to the lawsuits, but spokesperson Bailey Tomson stated: “We’re working with the City of San Jose on a land transfer process. Our shared goal is to optimize the public benefits of this project, including reconfiguring streets into open space and bike and pedestrian trails to give the community a more walkable, transit-oriented downtown.”
Although the city had stated that construction could begin in 2023, the case may shift that date. “I can’t give any time frame,” says Klein. “But you must control the land before putting a shovel to the ground.”
It seems unlikely that a few dusty old deeds would entirely derail the estimated $19 billion Downtown West project. In late June, Google dismissed its complaint against eight of the descendants after they accepted payouts of an undisclosed size. And just last week, Adams and his codefendants dismissed their countersuit, possibly due to another settlement.
Whether the remaining descendants of Billings, Peachy, and Naglee fall in line, the original entrepreneurs would surely have been impressed that their modest real estate investment is still generating returns a century and a half down the line.