DETROIT – If you are a billionaire, you may think you can get away with anything. Manuel “Matty” Moroun certainly did. He was the trucking magnate who owned the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit.
For years, he did everything he could to successfully prevent construction of a badly needed new bridge across the Detroit River. He effectively bought off the Michigan legislature with campaign donations and other contributions. He seized portions of a public park on the Detroit River and printed phony “Homeland Security – No Trespassing” signs to try to keep people away.
When that failed, he hired gun-toting goons to try to drive people out of Riverside Park, and got away with it for years.
But eventually, the tide turned against Matty. When he repeatedly failed to cooperate with a U.S. government order to finish building ramps to connect his bridge with nearby freeways, an exasperated Wayne County judge threw him in jail.
That was nine years ago. They let a shaken Moroun out the next day, and he built the ramps. The year before, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who didn’t need Moroun donations, had gone around the legislature and made an independent deal with Canada to build what will be the publicly owned Gordie Howe International Bridge.
An enraged Matty Moroun then spent $33 million on a campaign to try to get Michigan voters to outlaw any new bridge in a statewide referendum. That failed too.
The new bridge began to rise. Then, last year, Matty Moroun, worth an estimated $1.5 billion, died at 93, leaving his only child Matthew Moroun, now 46, in charge of the family empire, which includes, besides the bridge, CenTra trucking and more than 600 real estate parcels in and around the City of Detroit.
Matty Moroun was neither loved nor mourned by many outside his immediate family. Unlike other ultra-rich in the Detroit area, such as the Fords, he never took part in any major charitable drives nor participated in any civic initiatives, though some said he made some quiet contributions to worthy groups.
Matthew Moroun, who had largely been running his father’s empire over the last few years, acknowledged the family had a public relations problem. He became somewhat more accessible to the press, and said he was different from his pugnacious father.
“I grew up in a different time,” he told the Detroit Free Press three years ago. “I’m trying to be more civic-minded.”
Maybe. Or maybe … not so much.
Earlier this month, Jacques Driscoll, co-owner of the popular Green Dot Stables restaurant in Southwest Detroit, woke up to an unpleasant surprise. During the night, a fence had been erected blocking part of his parking lot, the restaurant’s storage unit and the dumpster; a manager’s car was fenced in as well.
The Moroun family, which claims it owns part of the parking lot, had done it. Several months ago, they claimed they owned that land. Driscoll said he did, but acknowledged the situation wasn’t completely clear, and offered to try to work out a deal.
Those negotiations dragged on, and finally Green Dot filed a lawsuit, claiming it owned the land, which it has used for 35 years, and asking Wayne County Circuit Court to so rule.
In response, the Detroit International Bridge Co., a wholly-owned Moroun subsidiary, threw up a fence, claiming the restaurant’s use of the parking lot was “putting them and our company at risk.”
If that seems absurd, that’s because it is. Matty Moroun was so notoriously litigious he was sometimes called “a full employment act for lawyers.” He spent vast sums filing a long series of nuisance lawsuits unsuccessfully trying to stop the new Gordie Howe Bridge.
He lost them all. But his strategy was clearly to delay the new bridge, now scheduled to open in 2024, as long as possible.
The company’s strategy here seems to be to intimidate the owners of the Green Dot, into caving in rather than face a long legal battle with an enemy who has virtually unlimited resources.
That has often worked for the Morouns before.
One it hasn’t worked with, however, is Gregg Ward, the president of the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry, which hauls vehicles carrying hazardous materials across the Detroit River.
The Ambassador Bridge, which was built in 1930, is too old and rickety to carry hazmat, though the Morouns continue to press the government to allow them to do so. Ward strongly believes they allow their own CenTra trucks to carry dangerous material, thumbing their noses at the law.
Indeed, Ward doesn’t mince words about the Morouns, who have repeatedly tried to buy his small ferry operation. “When you look at the Morouns using city property and closing roads without compensation, not paying water bills … ignoring hazmat regulations on the bridge, which threatens the life of the traveling public and nearby residents, etc., it is a neon light saying criminal enterprise.
“They get away with it because they have the cooperation of corrupt public officials blind with greed,” he added.
Matthew Moroun also has vowed to build yet another bridge across the Detroit River, not far from his current one. Canadian officials have issued him a permit, but he first has to meet a wide variety of conditions and tear the old one down when the new is done.
Officials on both sides of the border, however, have imposed other conditions before they will grant the Morouns a permit. They are believed to be worried about the family keeping their word.
I can imagine why.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
