One of the most famous properties in Costa Rica is once again up for sale. Hacienda Dorada is located in Playa Barrigona, one of the vaunted Gold Coast beaches of the province of Guanacaste, and it is owned by Hollywood star Mel Gibson. A cursory search of news reports published by The Costa Rica Star in the last three years indicates that this is not the first time Mr. Gibson is looking for buyers. The last time we reported on Hacienda Dorada was about a year ago, and the first time was March 2012. According to Curbed.com, a real estate website from the United States, luxury real estate agency Christie’s is once again trying to unload Mr. Gibson’s opulent mansion for less than $30 million.

 

Here’s the lead by Curbed.com:

 

For some reason, no one is snapping up actor Mel Gibson’s $29.75M Costa Rican villa, which is totally weird considering the property comes with 500 acres of private jungle. Are there really not any other celebrities or rich people who desire to obscure their fame in a lush rain forest? Maybe Costa Rica is not as trendy as Hawaii? Anyway, though it has been languishing on the market for a year—it’s seemingly the most expensive house there by a landslide—Gibson’s Spanish Colonial-style, three-villa complex on Playa Barrigona is actually pretty fantastic […]

 

Although Costa Rica attracts plenty of mega-celebrities from the entertainment world, Mr. Gibson’s property is one of the best-known, and not only because of its impressive listing description, to wit: seven bedrooms, two guest homes and 500 acres of pristine land in Guanacaste. As we have previously reported:

 

Gibson acquired the property in 2007 to get away from tabloid journalists who swore to track him down after the actor got involved in a series of mishaps and altercations with them. Three years later Mr. Gibson decided to put the property on the market, ostensibly because the paparazzi had once again found a way to intrude upon his privacy by hiking a few kilometers on the sand from Playa Buena Vista or Playa Samara.

 

However, the stately estate was once the setting for an ugly Hollywood spat that may have violated Costa Rican law on various grounds:

 

The feud between screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and actor and director Mel Gibson continues, and this time Mr. Eszterhas has made public an audio recording that his son Nick, who is a teenager, surreptitiously captured in his iPod at Mr. Gibson’s Hacienda Dorada in Playa Barrigona, Guanacaste last December.

 

The audio file and transcript were published by entertainment news site The Wrap. It is more than two minutes in length, and contains the sounds of a very angry man addressing others while trampling through a living space. The expletive-heavy accusations are presumably directed at Mr. Eszterhas, who had not completed the script for The Maccabees, a film project that Mr. Gibson would direct for the Warner Brothers studio.

 

There is an inherent problem with that recording, if it exists and if it was recorded in Costa Rica, presumably in Hacienda Dorada. Article 24 of our Constitution creates what in some common law countries is known as a “reasonable expectation of privacy” for all people in our country. This was ratified by Sala Cuarta (Constitutional Hall) in case number 6776-94, to wit:

 

“this limitation [against audio recording] can manifest itself in the observation and capturing of images and documents in general, as in the listening and recording of private conversations, and in the distribution or publishing after the fact, without due prior consent from the parties involved.”

 

If you’d like to purchase this handsome property from Mr. Gibson, you can contact Christie’s at this link, but make sure you follow proper procedure in recording the deed.