Fraser Trebilcock attorney Thad Morgan, Chair of the Firm's Litigation Department, secured a favorable judgment for his clients, ten townships in Emmet County, by a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

The case, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians v. Whitmer, involved the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians who claimed that an 1855 treaty between their tribe's predecessors and the United States gave them sovereignty over 337 square miles of land and 103 miles of shoreline in Emmet and Charlevoix counties in northern Michigan, establishing a permanent Indian reservation.

The tribe asked the Court to not allow local and state governments to have authority over their claimed land, which led to various local cities, counties, and townships to join the lawsuit as intervening defendants.

After two days of oral arguments, Judge Paul Maloney of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan ruled in favor of the defendants, stating that the tribe’s interpretation of the historical 1855 treaty was incorrect and that there was no basis for their claim, instead stating that the treaty gave 80 acres of land to families, and 40 acres of land to single individuals over the age of twenty-one.

View All News