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In an unusual twist to long-running disputes over road ownership on public land, a federal judge is blocking a Utah state judge from hearing a Tooele County case.

With a temporary restraining order read from the bench Monday, Judge Clark Waddoups sided with the state of Utah, halting the lawsuit brought in summer 2014 by Tooele County resident Michael Abdo and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).

Third District Judge Robert Adkins has been accepting briefs on various motions in that state case.

Waddoups, adopting language used by state attorneys, called SUWA's lawsuit an attempt at an "end run" around his jurisdiction in a federal case pending since 2012.

SUWA attorney Steve Bloch rejects that.

"It's not an end run. There's not a way for Mike Abdo, the taxpayer in Tooele County, to have his day in court without this sort of a lawsuit," Bloch said. "The right place for him to be raising those claims is in state court."

The judicial system allows the same sorts of issues to go before federal and state courts at the same time, he said.

But Assistant Attorney General Tony Rampton said the state law at issue has already been raised in several of the counties' federal lawsuits.

"The issue is going to be before the court," Rampton said. "The question has been raised … and it will be heard."

Waddoups had not filed a written copy of his order as of Friday afternoon. He is expected to issue a permanent injunction in the case.

Bloch said SUWA likely will appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The state of Utah and 26 counties, including Tooele, filed individual lawsuits against the federal government starting in 2011, attempting to gain title to 35,000 miles of roads or segments of roads that crisscross public land under a Civil War-era statute known as RS 2477.

That law once granted counties title to routes crossing public land, but was repealed in 1976. Now counties have to document 10 years of continuous use prior to 1976 to claim title to the roads. Under the law, they can maintain but not improve any routes they acquire.

The cases are slowly wending their way through court, with decisions on every road and road segment, one at a time.

Statewide, the counties are asserting claims to 14,000 roads or stretches of road. Tooele wants to own 709 routes covering 2,415 miles.

In the lawsuit filed in 3rd District Court in summer 2014, Abdo and SUWA argue that the state's claims to the roads come far too late because there's a seven-year statute of limitations in state law. Any claims to the roads had to be made by 1983, seven years after RS 2477 was repealed, they argue.

But the Utah attorney general's office rejects the argument on several grounds, including that federal law should trump the state law.

State attorneys also likely will argue that Utah law is now moot. This winter, the Utah Legislature passed a bill, retroactive to 1972, specifying that the statute of limitations doesn't apply in cases involving claims against the federal government for real property. HB401 was sponsored by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab.

Bloch said he believes the state attorneys and Judge Waddoups worry that if SUWA prevails in state court, the federal cases will fall apart.

"It's more a question of who's going to decide it first," Bloch said.

But Rampton said the federal cases are the best place for the roads' futures to be decided.

"Each road has its own history, and these questions will be dealt with on the merits, road by road," he said. "What SUWA is trying to do is prevent the merits from being heard."

Twitter: @KristenMoulton