A W.R. Berkley Corp. unit is not obligated to provide insurance coverage for a bungled bridge demolition under exclusions in its policy, an appeals court ruled Monday.

St. Louis-based Spirtas Co. was hired by a general contractor to demolish the Seneca Bridge in Illinois, and hired a subcontractor to do the blasting, according to the ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Spirtas Co., DBA Spirtas Wrecking Co. v. Nautilus Insurance Co.

The plan called for several explosive charges on the span crossing the Illinois River so it would fall into the water. Then, workers could separate the pieces and remove them using a crane.

The entire process was estimated to take 16 hours, during which barge traffic would be suspended.

But the 2010 operation did not go as planned, according to the ruling. Only a few of the charges detonated successfully and “part of the span fell to the river in a mangled mess” while another part remained connected to the abutting span.

The part still connected to the abutment had to be separated and lowered into the river, and Spirtas had to bring divers from Chicago to identify the pieces and cut them apart so they could be removed.

The entire process took 60 hours, or 44 more than planned. Watch a video of the demolition here.

Spirtas incurred an additional $82,000 in additional costs, and the contractor withheld $150,000 payment to Spirtas pursuant to the contract because of what happened. Spirtas filed a claim with Nautilus Insurance Co., a unit of Greenwich, Conn.-based Berkeley, for $232,000.

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Nautilus denied the claim, and Spirtas sued for declaratory judgment, breach of contract and “vexatious refusal to pay.”

In 2012, a federal judge in St. Louis held that three exclusions in the Nautilus policy applied and granted summary judgment to Nautilus dismissing.

In its ruling Monday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed unanimously that all three exclusions applied, even though only one was needed to deny coverage:

• One exclusion was for property damage for that “particular part of real property on which or your any contractors working directly or indirectly on your behalf are performing operations if the 'property damage' arises out of operations.” The appeals court agreed that the bridge span and river were “particular parts of real property” and excluded coverage.

• A second exclusion was for property damage to the “particular part of any property that must be restored, repaired or replaced because 'your work' was incorrectly performed on it.” The appeals court agreed that having to correct the mangled state of the main span constituted “restoring or repairing.”

• The third exclusion was for “impaired property” arising out of a defect or delay to perform a contract. The appeals court held the span and river were impaired property and this exclusion also precluded coverage.