Estes Park Health corrects inaccuracies in Estes Valley Voice July 22, 2025 article

Lawsuit filed by Estes Valley Voice unnecessarily wasted taxpayer funds

In a July 22, 2025 article, the Estes Valley Voice (EVV) made several false statements about the resolution of a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) lawsuit against Estes Park Health (EPH).

In the lawsuit, the EVV sought the release of a letter of intent (LOI) between EPH and UCHealth while confidential affiliation negotiations were ongoing. As soon as negotiations ended and an agreement was signed, EPH shared the LOI publicly and posted it on the hospital’s website.

After the LOI had already been shared publicly, the EVV’s legal team insisted that an expensive hearing should still be held. The court ruled against EVV and granted EPH’s motion to vacate the hearing.

One example of inaccurate reporting in the article relates to the sub headline by EVV, “Larimer County judge sided with Estes Valley Voice in its CORA lawsuit.”

The judge did not side with EVV on any of its arguments. Specifically, the judge ordered Estes Valley Voice to confer, after EVV argued their belief that they were not required to do so. The judge also ruled that the case was moot, another point against EVV’s position.

“The judge did not side with Estes Valley Voice even once on a disputed issue,” said Mark Sabey, an attorney with Hall Render, a legal firm that specializes in health care law and represents Estes Park Health.

Estes Valley Voice introduced the July 22 article with the headline, “Judge orders Estes Park Health to pay legal fees in public records dispute.”

This too is an inaccurate account of the court proceedings. The judge did not order EPH to pay any portion of EVV’s attorney fees in its July 17 order.

“After disclosing the Letter of Intent both to the public and to EVV, EPH felt that it should not spend public taxpayer funds on further litigation about disclosure,” said Sabey. “So, to conserve public funds and to avoid the much greater expense of preparing for and participating in a full court hearing with witnesses, EPH voluntarily and without court compulsion agreed, as explained in its motion to vacate the CORA hearing, to pay a small amount of reasonable legal fees as will be determined by the judge in the near future. EPH has good arguments challenging reasonableness of the fees incurred and claimed by EVV.”

The article continues with a quoted but inaccurate statement by Steve Zansberg, attorney for Estes Valley Voice, “EPH could not cite any statutory provision that allowed it to withhold the LOI with UCHealth.”

In fact, each time EVV requested the LOI, EPH responded by citing a clear statutory provision that allowed it to withhold the LOI until UCHealth and EPH reached an agreement. The statement read: “[The] Letter of Intent (LOI) between Estes Park Health and UCHealth is confidential and privileged and contains commercially sensitive information being used as part of a non-public negotiation process intended to arrive at the definitive agreements that will govern the eventual affiliation. As such, the LOI is not subject to disclosure pursuant to C.R.S. 24-72-204(3)(a)(IV) and the parties are barred from disclosing it.”

The Park Hospital District and UCHealth wrapped up negotiations and finalized the main terms of the definitive agreements on May 6, 2025. The letter of intent, the work product versions of the agreements and the latest version of the resolution authorizing the definitive agreements were publicly released on Estes Park Health’s website on May 7.

“It is standard practice for negotiating parties to keep their negotiations confidential until an agreement is reached,” said Sabey. “Such confidentiality is important for business reasons stated clearly in the letter from counsel for UCHealth attached to EPH’s Motion to Vacate hearing.”

In the weeks since that article published, the legal teams for Estes Valley Voice and Estes Park Health have continued working through the courts to determine reasonable attorney fees related to this lawsuit.

On August 14, 2025, the order was finalized regarding the reasonable attorney fees.

“The court order forces EVV to cover almost $5,000 while EPH has to pay $8,827 in attorney fees and $454 in costs,” said Sabey. “In the end, the court said the matter was not complex enough to justify the fees charged by EVV’s attorneys. The court made it clear that the order for EPH to pay fees was not based on a violation of CORA but was only based on EPH’s agreement to voluntarily and without court compulsion pay a portion of EVV’s attorney fees, thus avoiding an expensive hearing.”

EVV’s litigious approach toward local service districts, including the Estes Valley Fire Protection District and Park Hospital District, and their boards, which are made up of unpaid volunteers trying to meet public needs, results in wasted funds that could be used more productively to provide benefits to taxpayers.