CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A judge has dismissed a lawsuit that contested how the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University managed and planned to sell a ranch jointly owned by the universities’ foundations.
An attorney for Amy Davis, the Denver philanthropist who donated the Y Cross Ranch to the two universities, said Thursday that Davis would appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
“The case presents a very substantial legal question about who is the appropriate party who has standing to bring the case. And I’ve always felt that legal question needed to be resolved by the Wyoming Supreme Court,” said Davis’ attorney, Steve Miller, of Denver.
The Y Cross covers 50,000 acres of mostly high country in the Laramie Mountains between Cheyenne and Laramie in southeast Wyoming.
Davis donated her family’s ranch to the University of Wyoming Foundation and Colorado State Research Foundation in 1997. She says she intended for the Y Cross to be a working cattle ranch that turned a profit and provided a place for agriculture students to learn firsthand about ranching.
The ranch has seen few students or professors over the years.
Last year, the foundations briefly advertised the Y Cross for sale. Foundation officials said the Y Cross was never a good place to teach and selling it for perhaps $20 million or more would meet the intent of Davis’ gift by funding agriculture scholarships.
They took the ranch off the market after Davis filed suit in September.
In dismissing the suit Monday, Laramie County District Judge Thomas Campbell ruled that Davis lacks standing because she did not create a charitable trust through which she could have a say in how the Y Cross is managed.
“It’s unfortunate that it came to a lawsuit. But I think that under the circumstances, the facts of the law, the judge made the right decision,” said an attorney for the foundations, former Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan, of Casper.
A UW Faculty Senate resolution in October called on the universities to postpone selling the Y Cross for five years and in the meantime do more to promote the availability of the ranch for use by faculty and students. The nonbinding resolution passed 33-16.
