Tech moguls used ‘strong-armed’ tactics to buy Bay Area land for secret city, farmers say

By Nadia Lopez | Bloomberg

A group of landowners say a Silicon Valley-backed company trying to build a sustainable city northeast of San Francisco used unfair and “strong-armed” tactics to force farmers to sell their land, including pitting family members against each other, court documents show.

The details emerged on Friday as part of a lawsuit the company, Flannery Associates LLC, filed in May in District Court in Sacramento, alleging various farmers conspired to inflate the value of their land by $170 million. The landowners deny the claim and are seeking to dismiss the suit.

The latest allegations, contained in a report on a conference held by both parties in September, provide the most complete account to date of the landowners’ accusations against Flannery, which has backing from former Sequoia Capital Chairman Mike Moritz, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, among others.

The defendants say Flannery coerced farmers who didn’t want to sell to give up their land, forced property sales by evicting farmers and terminating leases, misled landowners and used the costly expense of litigation to get them to sell, according to the filing.

A Flannery spokesperson, in an email to Bloomberg, said that the company has specific evidence of price-fixing and that it’s offered reasonable settlements to individuals and is willing to settle with the remaining defendants.

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