Susan Miller owns 19 acres of woods in Lodi Township, in Washtenaw County about 45 miles from Jackson. Her land sits in the middle of somebody else’s plan: Toll Brothers’ Arbor Preserve, a development of 107 luxury homes split into a North and a South community on either side of her property, with two private wastewater treatment plants. The developers wanted her land, and when she would not sell, the fight moved to her road and her creek.
This is not a price story. Miller is not holding out for a bigger number. She wants the 19 acres kept in their natural state, and she hopes one day to donate them for environmental conservation. She is refusing on principle — and that refusal has now become a lawsuit, a paused state permit process, and an administrative fight expected to run at least a year. Here is where it stands, and why it matters well beyond Lodi Township.
Her Only Way In
Miller’s land is landlocked except for one thing: a private-road easement running from Waters Road. According to her complaint, in 2021 she signed a conditional deal with Red Equities LLC, the developer that held the ground before Toll. She would give up her original easement in exchange for a new access road built through Arbor Preserve–South — and the road was to be finished by December 31, 2025. If it was not built, the deal expired on its own.
Her lawsuit alleges the road was never built — yet in 2023 the developers recorded both the termination of her original easement and the replacement agreement with the Washtenaw County Register of Deeds, without telling her. She is asking the court to restore her original easement, cancel the recorded replacement, overturn the final site plan, and award damages of more than $25,000 plus fees and costs.
Her attorney, Sam Estenson, also alleges the developers warned her that if her original easement remained in place, she could be forced to pay more than $1 million toward the cost of building an access road. That is Estenson’s characterization of the pressure she faced — an allegation, not a court finding — but it is the most concrete detail in the dispute. Estenson says the developers “surrounded and besieged” his client after she refused to sell.
The Water
The second fight runs downhill. Miller’s complaint alleges that the development’s detention ponds and one of its two treatment plants would discharge treated wastewater about 10 feet from her property line — again, an allegation in the complaint, not a finding — into a creek on her land that feeds the Rouse Drain and, beyond it, the Saline River.
Private treatment plants are not something Lodi Township zoning normally allows. The exception was carved out long before Toll Brothers arrived: a consent judgment signed February 13, 2007, settling an earlier developer’s lawsuit against the township, rezoned some 206 acres and contemplated 434 homes. That judgment — amended in 2023 to add the planned-unit development and preliminary site plan — is still the machinery governing this land 19 years later, even as the plan itself has shrunk to 107 homes. Toll Northeast V Corp bought the property in 2024.
The state has already moved on the discharge itself: the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) issued the final discharge permits for the two plants on March 31, 2026. That is a fact, not an allegation, and it belongs in the record alongside everything else.
The Machinery Since
The township’s own process was split down the middle. On July 22, 2025, the Lodi Township Planning Commission voted 7–0 to recommend denying the final site plans; Miller spoke at that meeting, and Toll’s representative confirmed the community would be gated. The township board approved the plans anyway, 4–3, on October 20, 2025, with conditions that included all permits being in hand before construction.
In April 2026, according to Livable Lodi, a local advocacy group, Toll felled trees on the North site — 12 landmark trees, some of them more than 200 years old — and the township held a special meeting on April 15 partly over the cutting. Then, on May 5, 2026, the board voted 5–1 to make Toll wait for its remaining state wastewater construction permits — the Part 41 permits — before starting construction.
Miller sued on June 18, 2026 (the date on the court docket), naming Toll Brothers Inc., Toll Northeast V Corp, and Red Equities LLC in the 22nd Circuit Court before Judge Julia B. Owdziej. On August 5 the court heard her motion for a preliminary injunction, and the order signed August 13 granted that motion in part and denied it in part. The order’s text is not public, but LANA — the Lodi Area Neighbors Alliance, which backs Miller — reports that the granted part bars Toll from building across her contested easement. No later docket entry changes that order.
And then there is the ruling that never came. Toll filed its motion to trim the case — a partial summary-disposition motion — on July 27. Miller opposed it on September 9; Toll replied on October 8. The hearing set for September 16 was reset by the court to October 14, and then reset again, to November 25, 2026. As of today, no claim in this case has been dismissed, and none has been ruled on. Red Equities filed its own summary-disposition motion on October 9; it, too, is undecided. The Part 41 permits have never been issued, and according to LANA’s August report, EGLE has paused action on them while LANA’s challenges to the two discharge permits go before an Administrative Law Judge — a contested-case process LANA was told will take at least a year. Nothing in the court record mentions construction, and no construction has started anywhere on the site.
The Other Side
Toll Brothers declined to comment on the lawsuit. In its court filings, the defense calls the suit a “frivolous attempt” to delay the project and cause financial harm. The filings argue that Toll Brothers Inc. does not legally own the property — Toll Northeast V Corp does — and should be dropped from the case, and that Miller’s easement claims were filed too late. Toll’s attorney Alan Greene has made the public case that the development was already agreed to in the 2007 consent judgment, that it has shrunk from 434 homes to 107, and that wells and sewers are regulated by the state and the county, not the township. Fair is fair: EGLE reviewed the discharge application and issued the permits. The developers hold real approvals. What they do not yet hold is a ruling on whether the case against them even survives — because that hearing keeps moving.
The Argument
Lodi Township is in Washtenaw County, not ours. But nothing in this machinery is unique to Washtenaw. A court settlement signed in 2007 still tying a township board’s hands in 2026. Private sewage plants arriving in a rural township under state permits the township cannot control. A planning commission’s unanimous recommendation set aside. A single landowner learning what had been recorded against her land after the fact, and learning the rest of the machinery late. Every element of that pattern exists in Michigan law, and any of it could land in a Jackson County township. The pattern is the story — and the pattern travels.
Jackson County Land Owners Claim and Stance Guide
Miller’s strongest protection would have been built years before the first survey stake. Any landowner can start building it now. Think of it as live protection — a standing watch and a standing record, not a document in a drawer.
- KNOW YOUR PAPER. Keep your deed, your survey, every easement, and your title policy together, with copies at home. Never sign away or swap an easement under time pressure. If you ever trade one access for another, get the promise — the replacement, the deadline, and what happens if the deadline is missed — in writing, with the consequence spelled out.
- READ THE 20-YEAR DOCUMENTS. Township and county master plans, capital improvement plans, road commission and drain commissioner plans, and sewer and utility extension plans are where projects live decades before they arrive. They are public. Read the ones that cover your land.
- WATCH THE LIVE WIRES. On a rhythm — monthly is enough — check planning commission and township board agendas and minutes, public-hearing notices, EGLE permit notices (the state’s MiWaters system), and Register of Deeds recordings touching your parcel and the parcels around you.
- GET ON THE RECORD EARLY. Written comments and hearing statements become part of the official record that agencies and courts weigh later. A stance filed before a vote is worth ten filed after the approval.
- BUILD THE CLAIM FILE BEFORE YOU NEED IT. Dated photographs of your land as it is. A log of every call, letter, and conversation. Every notice, kept. If a dispute ever comes, you will be glad the file started early.
- ORGANIZE BEFORE THE VOTE. Neighbors who form an alliance while a project is still a proposal are a constituency. After the vote, they are appellants. In Lodi Township, that is exactly what the Lodi Area Neighbors Alliance became — and its permit challenges are a large part of why nothing has been built.
- TALK TO A LAWYER BEFORE YOU SIGN ANYTHING. A Michigan real-estate attorney, consulted for an hour before a signature, costs a fraction of a lawsuit after one.
An owner who is documented, on the record, and organized changes the math for everyone else. Anyone thinking about someone else’s land should feel that — and think very carefully before a thought becomes a bulldozer.
Our View
The hearing that was supposed to test this case was set for September 16. It was moved to October 14, then moved again to November 25. More than four months after Susan Miller filed suit, the core questions — her road, the recorded easement, the discharge by her creek — sit exactly where they sat in June: undecided, while the calendar does the deciding. A case like this should be resolved — on the merits, in the open, without delay doing quietly what no judge has ruled. Justice and ethics shall prevail in such a case, and the sooner a court says so one way or the other, the better for everyone involved, on both sides of her property line.
Landowners watching from Jackson County should not wait for their own November 25 to start preparing. The guide above is short on purpose. Start it now, while starting is still cheap.
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