Hedge Row in the Hamptons
A burning question in the Hamptons, the tony beach towns on Long Island, is: Who’s the hedge hog?
Hedge fund king James Chanos, of Kynikos Associates, and Marc Spilker, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, are squabbling about a common path to the beach, according to CNBC's Margaret Brennan.
The path is bordered by a row of six-foot-high hedges--or at least it was until a bulldozer knocked them over like drunken sailors.
Chanos accuses Spilker of flattening the greenery to widen the path to the Atlantic. Both have a legal right to the path, Brennan says.
Spilker’s lawyer cites a 1969 regulation that says the path must be 15 feet wide. He claimed that Chanos “has been unwilling to rationally discuss the situation.”
Chanos’ legal team counters that a 1982 document requires the path to be only four feet wide. “The use of the bulldozer on the property is a trespass,” Chanos' attorney huffed.
Hamptonite Steven Gaines says such landscaping spats occur often among habitués of the multi-million-dollar estates.
There's an added complication: Chanos’ hedge fund has about $3 billion stashed at Goldman Sachs.