The Log-Jam Monopoly: Who Controls a Western Washington River?

The case, tried at Shelton last week, is of deep interest to the loggers and boom companies of Puget Sound. Under the law, almost every river in Western Washington has been filed upon for appropriation by boom companies organized to catch, sort, boom and raft logs and other timber products. Such companies are authorized to levy a toll of 75 cents per 1,000 feet board measure for their services. They file with the secretary of state a plat showing the portions of the rivers on which they propose to operate. The law is silent as to how far their control extends over the territory included in the plat, and whether they incur any responsibility to loggers or the public by reason of their proposed appropriation.

The Shelton case is the only one in which these questions have been raised, and the loggers of Mason County have followed it closely. Joseph Doyle, the plaintiff, is engaged in business on the Skokomish River. A large quantity of his logs was caught last year in a jam formed within the limits of a plat filed with the secretary of state by the Union City Boom Company. After failing to break the jam himself, Doyle notified the company and demanded that it break the jam, take his logs to its works and raft them ready for towage on Hood Canal. The company refused, holding that it was under no obligation to do so. Doyle then sued for damages.

Ex-Senator W. H. Kneeland and Henry J. Tremper, brother of E. P. Tremper of this city, argued for Doyle that the company had, by filing its plat, acquired a monopoly of that part of the river within its limits and had therefore assumed responsibility for keeping the river in good condition and free from jams. Attorneys for the company argued that filing the plat was merely notice that the company might in time extend its operations over certain necessary shore rights; its responsibility extended only to the part of the river covered by its works and actual operations, and the acquisition of rights in the platted area was not proof of abandonment.

The judge charged the jury that the company, having acquired river rights by filing its plat over the entire area in question, had assumed responsibility for failure to keep the river free from jams; but that it might show abandonment of its plat claim by long-continued nonuse and by acquiescence in the use of the river by loggers. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant. All of Mason County was aroused in two hostile camps on the subject, and the result was awaited with deep interest.