Yesler’s Waterfront Battle Reaches the Supreme Court
A landmark property rights case regarding Seattle’s harbor lines is dismissed on a technicality.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The important case of Henry Yesler, plaintiff in error, vs. the Board of Harbor Line Commissioners of the State of Washington, involving harbor rights of great value along the waterfront of Seattle, was today thrown out of the United States supreme court because of a defective record. The supreme court decision stated: 'There is not sufficient averment of the title.' The decision settled nothing, and the case will have to again be considered by the Washington court. Yesler owned wharf property in Seattle and sought by a writ of prohibition to restrain the state board of harbor line commissioners from changing the harbor lines, it being the purpose of the commission to so locate the harbor lines that they would include within them his property. Yesler claimed that this would amount to deprivation of property without due process of law, contrary to the constitution. The court below decided against him, holding that against the state the title was such that no owner can assert riparian rights below the line of ordinary high water. The supreme court dismissed Yesler’s appeal on the ground that the affidavit presented was so defective as to not fairly raise a Federal question.
“The decision settled nothing, and the case will have to again be considered.”
Henry Yesler was one of Seattle’s most powerful early developers, and this case highlights the perennial tension between private property claims and public control over the city's waterfront. The uncertainty of property rights during the rapid expansion of the 1890s echoes modern legal battles over shoreline zoning and the 'public trust' doctrine in a city that is still fundamentally shaped by its maritime geography.
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