Charles H. Chase versus the Michigan United Railway Company

A tweet-stream version of this article was published in August 2022 as part of the #LostEastLansing project.

As mentioned in the article about the College Grove plat, East Lansing’s Division Street was created when College Grove developers Horace Angell and Charles Chase sued to split their partnership and the resulting chancery decree called for a division of parcels that created the aptly named street.

What is much less known is that about five years later, Chase was the plaintiff in another lawsuit when he attempted to block the streetcar and interurban railway from passing through the plat.

In 1911, the same year the Michigan United Railway Company completed its line to Owosso, Charles Chase sued to eject the railway from M.A.C. Avenue. This loss of the right-of-way would have denied the people of Lansing, East Lansing, and the Michigan Agricultural College easy access to the resort area at Pine Lake (now Lake Lansing), and the communities beyond including Shaftsburg, Perry, Morrice, Owosso, and Corunna.

It’s unclear why Chase brought the lawsuit, considering that he had assisted in preparing the deed that conveyed the right-of-way to the railway company in 1905, and even after his split from Angell he still agreed to sign that deed. By all accounts he gave it away without reservation.

Nevertheless, Chase owned the as-yet-unplatted portion of M.A.C. Avenue north of Elizabeth Street, which was allotted to him in the 1906 land division, and tried to claim that the “dedication of streets and highways [including the M.U.R. railway track] was never accepted by the public.”¹

Bizarrely, Chase also tried to claim that his lots south of Elizabeth Street extended to the centerline of M.A.C. Avenue, that the street itself somehow was not officially dedicated in the College Grove plat. (Though of course it clearly was. The original plat filing shows a 66-foot-wide street.)

Chase’s argument hinged mainly on the fact that when the Meridian Township board had granted a franchise for the right-of-way to the M.U.R.’s predecessor company in 1905, whoever was responsible for recording that action in the township record book had neglected to do so.^†

Therefore, according to Chase, the dedication “was never accepted.” Circuit court Judge Charles B. Collingwood—whose now-landmark East Lansing house made Sunset Lane a popular address—heard the case, and ruled in favor of Chase.

But on appeal, the state supreme court ruled that Judge Collingwood had erred in not allowing certain testimony from the M.U.R. that proved the franchise had been granted by the township board. The supreme court sent the case back to the circuit court to rehear it.²

The retrial was entered into the circuit court calendar for the September 1911 term, but Collingwood put it last on the docket, leaving it idle while he heard some 37 other jury cases. After five months’ delay—plus an extra day due to a shorthanded quota of jurors—it finally came to trial on February 3, 1912.³

Here’s where it turns ludicrous:

MASON, Feb. 3 — The case of Charles H. Chase against the M.U.R. came to an abrupt end when the court directed the jury to bring in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and awarding him six cents damages, as the defendant’s occupancy of the land in East Lansing was deemed illegal.

Lansing State Journal, 3 Feb 1912, page 7.

No joke: 6 cents.^†† Charles Chase won the lawsuit but received virtually nothing for his claim, and the railway was allowed to keep its “illegal occupancy” on M.A.C. Avenue.⁴

Later that year, Chase and his wife Elizabeth deeded some “parcels on College Grove” to the railway for the nominal (if not actual) sum of $1, effectively closing out any remaining claim he might have had against the Michigan United Railway. The interurban continued to operate on this line for another seventeen years.⁵

1. Chase v. Mich United Ry Co., 165 Mich 493 (1911). ↩︎
2. Chase v. Mich United Ry Co., 165 Mich 493 (1911). ↩︎
3. LSJ, 14 Sep 1911, p. 1; 2 Feb 1912, p. 7. ↩︎
4. LSJ, 3 Feb 1912, p. 7. ↩︎
5. LSJ, 6 Sep 1912, p. 10. ↩︎

1. † In 1905, East Lansing was yet to be chartered. East of Abbot Road, the area remained part of Meridian Township.↩︎
2. †† This seems to have been the going rate for “nominal damages” at the time. A year later, Teddy Roosevelt would receive the same amount in his famous libel suit against the publisher of an Ishpeming newspaper.↩︎