Court agrees Mo. has no property right to bridge

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- An appeals court Tuesday upheld the dismissal of Attorney General Jay Nixon's lawsuit challenging a state agency's decision to abandon its interest in an old railroad bridge.

The Missouri Court of Appeals ruling supports an earlier lower court decision that said the state has no property right to the Missouri River bridge in Boonville, Mo. Nixon, who appealed the lower court's ruling, had challenged whether the Department of Natural Resources could legally give up its interest in using the bridge as part of the Katy Trail State Park.

Nixon, who has been in a dispute with Gov. Matt Blunt's administration over the bridge's fate, said he would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

"If the giveaway of the bridge is completed, the ramifications could threaten the integrity of the entire Katy Trail, as well as take away an integral component of the city of Boonville's economic development efforts," Nixon said in a written statement.

Doyle Childers, director of the Department of Natural Resources, said in a telephone interview that the ruling just reinforces what the department had been saying along -- that it didn't own the bridge.

"We have no ownership in the bridge, and the parks tax should not be required to spend millions of dollars to take and refurbish a bridge that we have no ownership in," Childers said. "It was a very simple case, but unfortunately the political aspects of it outweighed the legal aspects [judging by] the attorney general's actions."

Union Pacific Railroad Co., the bridge's current owner, wants to dismantle it and reuse its steel for a new bridge over the Osage River east of Jefferson City.

In July, the appeals court affirmed the same lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the St. Louis-based Great Rivers Environmental Law Center on behalf of several bicyclists and a donor who helped finance the Katy Trail.

Gov. Matt Blunt said he wasn't surprised by Tuesday's ruling, which he hoped would end the dispute.

"I am pleased that the department will no longer have this frivolous lawsuit hanging over its head, so it can be free to direct its resources to protecting the environment and creating new recreation opportunities for Missourians including new access along the Katy Trail," Blunt said in a written statement.

He said it disappoints him that Nixon continues to take the matter to court despite the state's objections. Blunt said the attorney general's lawsuit has now cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, including more than a quarter-million dollars paid by Nixon out of Missouri's legal expense fund.

Nixon is running against Blunt in the 2008 gubernatorial election.