PARIS – Jurors considering evidence in a lawsuit by a former Mt. Abram Ski Area owner against Camden National Bank are to resume deliberations today.

The nine jurors – six women and three men – began deliberating the case at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in Oxford County Superior Court in Paris.

Three-and-a-half hours later, they recessed until this morning.

Judge Thomas E. Delahanty tasked the jury with determining if the plaintiffs, Steamship Navigation Corp. and its officers Randy and Kathleen Dunican, had proved the existence of a loan contract between themselves and the Camden bank.

The judge also asked jurors to determine if the bank had breached the contract, and, if so, to decide on a damage amount to be awarded.

If jurors fail to find either the existence of a contract, which could be an oral promise instead of a written document, or that it was breached, Delahanty said they would have to rule in favor of the bank.

Portland lawyers Daniel G. Lilley and Peter J. DeTroy are representing Steamship and the Dunicans, and Camden National Bank, respectively.

Initially, the suit charged the bank and bank official Stephen C. Staples with fraud, misrepresentation and breach of contract after the bank foreclosed in 2000 on Steamship’s Mt. Abram Ski Area in Greenwood and other properties.

But on Tuesday, Delahanty threw out all but the breach of contract charge.

That charge claims that Staples and the bank reneged on its oral promises that:

• They would provide Steamship and the Dunicans with a requested $300,000 loan to increase the resort’s snowmaking capacity.

• Drawing down a $100,000 line of credit would not create a mortgage default for plaintiffs.

• It was acceptable to draw down the line of credit over the credit amount, and that it would not put the plaintiffs in danger of default.

• They would provide an interim $75,000 loan.

However, the judge also removed Staples from the suit Tuesday, saying that because he was acting as an agent of the bank, he could not be held liable for breach of contract.

Wednesday marked the eighth day of the trial, which began on Sept. 13.

The day opened with closing arguments from Lilley and DeTroy.

“This case is about a bank that was being 100 percent behind you, then being 100 percent against you,” Lilley told the jury.

He reiterated testimony and documented evidence that allegedly showed that since 1995, the Dunicans relied in good faith on a history of oral promises from the bank and Staples in obtaining loans.

“When you walk a person down a primrose path, you can’t suddenly throw them overboard,” he said, “banks have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. They have to treat people fairly.”

Using the bank’s 1998 appraisals of the foreclosed properties, Lilley asked jurors to award his clients $3.2 million in damages should they find the defendants guilty of breach of contract.

He also asked the jury to use its judgment in determining an additional amount for a reasonable appreciation of the involved real estate.

DeTroy asked the jury to consider the facts, not Lilley’s presentation of the case “as the big, bad bank versus the little guy.”

DeTroy said Dunican was responsible for his financial disaster because “every loan he got involved in didn’t make money. He lost money in every business venture.”

He argued that the bank failed to properly monitor Steamship’s properties, and that they based their loans on Randy Dunican’s profit projections, which reportedly never materialized.