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A group of lifetime season ticket holders at Killington have turned to the courts to keep their skiing passes alive.

More than five months after Killington resort's new owners announced that nearly all lifetime passes to the mountain would expire within two years, a group of pass holders filed a lawsuit in Rutland Superior Court on Thursday seeking to extend the life of their passes.

"Many of us are here just on principle," said Martin Post, part of a delegation of pass holders who came to court Thursday. "We feel like there's been a great injustice done."

Post, his wife, Jill, Judith Dark and William Langlais are the only four lifetime pass holders named in the lawsuit. But the quartet said they are just a small sampling of ticket holders who support the legal action.

Martin Post said the four plaintiffs are members of a group called the Killington Skier Advocate Association, which counts more than 200 lifetime pass holders among its membership. All told, there are more than 1,000 pass holders who would be affected by the new owners' decision not to honor the passes, members of the group said.

During the past several months, Martin Post said the group has urged the new owners to "do the right thing" by honoring the lifetime passes. After those attempts failed, the group's membership voted unanimously to sue the owners.

Killington resort was sold to Powdr Corp. and SP Land Co. in May when the two buyers spent $85.2 million to purchase American Skiing Co.'s holdings.

The passes were sold by Sherburne Corp. in the early 1960s to help get the resort off the ground. Over the years, many of the passes have been resold.

One woman at the courthouse Thursday said she spent $25,000 to buy passes for herself and her husband in 1996.

"I would have been better off keeping my money in the bank," Barbara Swensson said.

While the financial implications of the passes' demise are on the minds of many ticket owners, Jill Post said the majority of KSAA members simply felt betrayed and disrespected.

"People are basically ticked off," she said. "We feel like we had an agreement and the agreement has been broken."

Pass holder Linda Hunt from Mendon used much more legal terms for describing her feelings.

"We feel that the company colluded to defraud us," she said.

In the group's seven-page lawsuit, the contention is that the resort's new and old owners made themselves legally liable for honoring the passes indefinitely.

"There were a continuum of activities that we believe makes them liable," said Peter Langrock, one of three Middlebury lawyers representing the pass holders.

By recognizing the existence of the lifetime passes and committing to honor them at various points of the resort's recent sale, the present and past incarnations of the mountain's ownership — Killington Ltd., American Skiing Co., SP Land Co., SP II Resort, LLC, Killington /Pico Ski Resort Partners LLC and S-K-I, Ltd. — made themselves legally responsible for continuing the lifetime passes, Langrock argued.

Terminating the passes represents a breach of contract for all the involved parties, the group argues.

A Killington representative said Thursday the company would not comment on the lawsuit. However, Alan Loewinsohn, a lawyer in Dallas, Texas, representing SP Land Co. and SP II Resort LLC, said the new owners were under no obligation to honor the passes, which he said existed as a legal liability only so long as the Sherburne Corp. existed.

"I think my clients are disappointed that they chose to file the complaint because it's based on factual inaccuracies," he said. "On their face, the passes ended when the company ended. They're not lifetime passes in the sense of the holder's lifetime. They existed as long as Shelburne Corporation existed which it no longer does."

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