OSAGE COUNTY — On Tuesday, May 16, Stutsman Transportation, Inc., Hills, Iowa, and its insurance company agreed to pay Osage County $1,576,451 as compensation for the loss of the Pentecostal Bridge to settle the matter out of court. According to the settlement, Osage County will release the trucking company any and all liability moving forward. There’s a lot of paper yet to change hands and signatures to be signed and witnessed, but both parties agreed the settlement is publishable.

“We believe the settlement represents a good result for Osage County, better enabling it to eventually fund the construction of a replacement bridge,” said Matt Clement of Jefferson City, the attorney hired by the county to litigate the case.

Osage County Commissioners estimate the amount to be about 60%, with a wide margin of error either way, depending on inflation, of what it will take to replace the wrecked span. Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) officials are encouraging the county to apply for Bridge Rural Offset (BRO) funding for the balance. MoDOT is now looking for larger projects for those dollars. The state enjoys a large flush of federal cash in the wake of the COVID crisis. American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and infrastructure legislation have made a good quantity of road and bridge money available. Commissioners are now adding the case settlement and MoDOT encouragement, albeit not guaranteed. They calculate there will be a bridge in place within a few years. Nor should the county have to pay for something the trucking company’s employee destroyed.

The new bridge will have a more liberal weight limit than the lost classic truss bridge. It will also meet other MoDOT requirements the old bridge was not subject to when it was built in the late 19th Century. One example is the hard left turn onto the span from the north. That proved to be a significant cause of the August 2020 accident. MoDOT engineers will not allow such a tight curve onto or off a new bridge built to modern standards. The tradition, nostalgia, and other aesthetics should not have been taken from Westphalia residents, but they will be compensated with a superior crossing of the Maries River on CR 611.

“This was a unique case because of the historic nature, as well as the age and condition of the Pentecostal Bridge before its collapse,” Clement explained. “The court considered the county’s argument that the proper measure of damages, in this case, was the full cost to replace the bridge, but, in a ruling ahead of trial, deemed the cost to construct a new bridge was not the proper measure. The judge instead ruled the jury would be instructed to award the county the ‘value’ of the bridge before it was destroyed. That, of course, made the possible trial results very unpredictable. The commissioners stood firm in their position to recover as much as possible, even past that ruling. The pre-trial testimony from commissioners, and the willingness of citizens who were particularly impacted by the collapse to also give their testimony, ultimately drove the trucking company and its insurer to raise its prior offer and settle the case.”