The Five Million Dollar Railroad Grudge
A prominent Walla Walla railroad contractor accuses the Northern Pacific of malicious legal tactics that destroyed his business.
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.
On the application of Attorney L. B. Stedman of Seattle, Judge Hanford today granted George W. Hunt, the well-known railroad contractor of Walla Walla, permission to sue the receivers of the Northern Pacific Railroad for $5,000,000 damages. The complaint will state that in February 1891, Hunt was the proprietor of the Oregon Washington Territory Railway Company and was engaged in constructing a railway from Centralia to Gray's Harbor. Hunt was indebted to the Northern Pacific for about $140,000 and was in New York negotiating a sale of bonds for his railroads. The Northern Pacific, wanting to prevent him from establishing independent roads, commenced attachment proceedings against him, alleging he had absented himself from his home to defraud creditors. Hunt claims the attachment was maliciously sued out, and that the resulting bad press ruined his credit, forced him to stop work, and lost him over $1,000,000 in subsidies.
“The present officers of the Northern Pacific company do not approve of the action of the former officials in securing the attachments against Hunt.”
This reflects the fierce, often predatory corporate environment of Washington's late 19th-century rail expansion. Battles over right-of-way and corporate sabotage are echoes of the intense consolidation that shaped the Pacific Northwest's infrastructure.
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