SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A jury will decide whether Boy Scouts are responsible for a wildfire that burned 14,200 acres in 2002 and cost more than $12 million to control, a judge said.

U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell said there are issues of fact that must be settled at trial, denying the government's request that she pin liability on the Great Salt Lake Council.

She pointed to deposition testimony from Scouts who said they extinguished a fire with water, urine and dirt and slept next to the site.

"But the record fails to provide any indication that either the young Scouts or the teen counselors conducted a 'cold-out' test," Campbell said Monday.

In that test, someone can safely run a hand through the coals and ashes.

A Forest Service investigator pinpointed the fire's origin to an area where Scouts had stayed overnight.

Seventeen Scouts, ages 12 to 14, were working on a wilderness-survival badge at Camp Tomahawk in the Uinta Mountains in eastern Utah. There were two 15-year-old counselors but no adults present.

At that time, in June 2002, there was a state ban on fires in the area because of dry conditions. The Great Salt Lake Council also had its own restrictions.