New York State’s highest court has ruled that it doesn’t have enough evidence to rule on a long-running navigation-rights dispute between the editor of the Adirondack Explorer and a group of property owners.

The decision sends the six-year-old case back to a lower court for trial. It also wipes out, at least for now, a pair of decisions that cleared the way for the public to paddle a waterway that connects two parts of the state-owned William C. Whitney Wilderness.

In a unanimous decision handed down Tuesday morning, the seven-member Court of Appeals found the court record in the case is filled with too much “conflicting or inconclusive evidence” and that a trial on the facts is warranted.

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