The moguls also allegedly pitted family members against each other, the court documents said. : 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.