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Gov. John Lynch will not be forced to be questioned, or deposed, by the owners of Mount Sunapee Resort or to hand over documents from his office, Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Philip Mangones has ruled.

Owners Tim and Diane Mueller are suing the state. They have leased the Newbury ski area, which is located in Mount Sunapee State Park, for 10 years. For seven of those, they have been lobbying to extend the lease boundary to include 175 acres of state parkland that would connect the resort with private property in Goshen where they hoped to build slope-side condominiums.

Lynch opposed the expansion in his 2004 campaign and has refused to put the expansion plan on the Executive Council's agenda for consideration. The Muellers' lawyer, Jim Higgins, has said Lynch breached the Muellers' contract with the state by doing so and cost them $13.2 million.

Last week, Mangones denied the Muellers' request to question Lynch, saying it would place "unnecessary demands on a serving governor." He also denied a request from the attorney general's office to dismiss the case.

Mangones said the question of whether to depose a high public official must be decided on how necessary it is and whether it would distract that person from important duties. He said the Muellers do not need to depose Lynch to pursue their case.

He also said documents that were requested from Lynch's office were produced in years after the lease was negotiated, signed and approved. Mangones denied a request to force Lynch to hand them over, saying they were not relevant to the case or likely to produce evidence admissible in court.

In a separate ruling last week, Mangones denied the state's motion to dismiss the case and said the Muellers have laid out an adequate case claiming the state breached its contract and broke promises made by public officials. When considering such a motion, a court must assume that the allegations made by the opposing party are all true and consider whether they would constitute a basis for granting legal relief.

The Muellers have argued that they thought - and an early map in lease negotiations showed - that the lease boundary extended to the north and west boundaries of the state park. Only after the lease was signed did they learn that state maps had it wrong and included a buffer area between the two boundaries, according to court documents.

Mangones said the Muellers sufficiently alleged that they relied on representations from the state, including statements from the former commissioner of the Department of Resources and Economic Development, that the lease boundaries would be redrawn to match the park boundaries.

Higgins has argued that the lease, which lays out a process under which an expansion could be considered, requires the governor to put the Muellers' proposal before the Executive Council.

The attorney general's office has said there was no error in the original lease agreement and, therefore, no breach in the contract. The state has also said the governor has the authority to set the Executive Council's agenda.

Mangones denied allegations by the Muellers that expansion onto land outside the public park that the Muellers own was their "promised right," but he said he would consider their case for land inside the park. He said the court could not compel the governor and council to approve the expansion plan if the case were found in the Muellers' favor, as they had requested. Instead, Mangones said the Muellers could ask for the leasing contract to be changed so that the lease boundary includes the additional 175 acres.

A trial is scheduled to start March 30.