Montana’s stream access laws have become a sparring point in this year’s gubernatorial race, so it’s fitting that one of the larger lawsuits in recent history appears to be settled, with Montana on the winning side.

Two weeks ago, a Madison county judge supported the cause of stream-access proponents when he ruled that the public was allowed to use a strip of land to either side of a road and bridge across the Ruby River. That was the final piece of a much larger case that the Public Land/Water Access Association filed a dozen years ago against media billionaire James Cox Kennedy after he tried to deny public access to the Ruby River, in this case via the Seylor Lane Bridge.