A rock mining lawsuit that pitted a mineral rights owner again a state park got new life Thursday when the Tennessee Court of Appeals vacated a 2007 ruling that allowed mountain stone rock mining to continue along the Cumberland Trail.

The case has been sent back to Hamilton County courts.

State officials and members of environmental groups praised the appeals court’s decision.

“Wonderful!” said Don Barger, senior director of the Southeast Regional Office of National Parks, who also joined the TDEC in a friends-of-the-court filing.

“It’s an important decision and it speaks to the basic inconsistencies of severed mineral rights. Basically the court is saying that a mineral rights owner’s deed cannot be read to deprive the surface owner of their rights,” said Mr. Barger, adding that he has not yet reviewed the entire ruling.

While the appeals court decision, written by Judge Charles D. Susano Jr., one of the three justices hearing the case, did not rule on whether mountain stone or “sandstone” is a mineral, it did make clear that the destructive surface mining method used cannot violate the surface owner’s rights.

“The case law, while somewhat muddled on the question of how to define ‘mineral,’ is clear on this different but related point: general mineral reservations in a deed will not be construed so broadly as to include extraction methods that destroy the surface rights conveyed in the same deed,” the ruling states. “If a grantor wishes to retain the right to obtain minerals through destructive surface extraction, he must explicitly reserve that right within the deed; a general mineral reservation will not suffice.”

The ruling could have a broad impact as many landowners in the Cumberland Plateau and East Tennessee mountain region do not own the mineral rights to their property.

The case began in February 2007, when contractors working for a Florida-based mineral rights owner tore up about 70 to 100 yards of the Cumberland Trail to mine sandstone. State officials sought a stop-work injunction in court and asked the mineral-rights owner, Elmer C. Hill of Lahiere/Hill Partnership in Destin, Fla., to stop operations in the 300-mile-long state park.

The case went to court in Hamilton County Chancery Court in April 2007, and Chancellor Frank Brown allowed miners to continue work in the park as long as they did not come closer than within 25 feet from the trail itself.

Lahiere/Hill’s attorney, Rick Hitchcock, said the case will continue.

“I think we’re headed back to another trial,” he said.

Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, agreed the case will remain in court for a while.

“We're pleased with the decision and believe the Court of Appeals laid down good guidelines for the trial court to use in further consideration of this case,” she said.

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