From the fire chief’s perspective, Upper Pine River Fire Protection District went up against a former employee in court and won. The case was open-and-shut.
Chief Bruce Evans terminated firefighter Chad Sells in July 2017. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2018, Sells organized a meeting of line firefighters to address a concert of growing concerns at the department. But Evans, who had been informed of the meeting in advance by a captain in the department, likened it to a coup and fired Sells 48 hours after the meeting.
In 2021, a federal judge ruled on a motion for summary judgment and sided with the department, dismissing Sells’ case.
“The district didn’t settle, the district won that case in summary judgement (sic),” Evans wrote in an email to The Durango Herald in response to an open records request for the settlement that concluded the case.
But when contacted about the case, all Sells said was “no comment.” He directed the Herald to his attorney, Dave Albrechta, for further information.
“The case was resolved and dismissed by agreement,” Albrechta wrote in an email, and said Sells was “unable to comment on his case and how it ended.”
Evans was insistent that he and the department won the case, and did not settle – Evans never signed any agreement, he maintained. But as for the actions of Upper Pine’s liability insurance provider? Evans says he is in the dark.
“Like I said, in what the insurance company does, we don’t have any control over that,” Evans said in an interview. “A lot of places will settle, but I didn’t sign any settlement. I waited for the summary judgment. So I don’t know what the insurance company did.”
Whatever the price of Sells’ silence, likely paid by the district’s insurer, is unknown. It was not enshrined in a document signed by the chief, nor was it reviewed by the board at a public meeting.
And its effects on Upper Pine’s insurance premiums are impossible to decode given the dizzying array of other factors that influence the insurance market. (Evans attributes any increase in premiums to two crashes involving district vehicles and the rising cost of rolling stock – but not to lawsuits.)
This is not uncommon, an investigation by the Herald found. Nor is it illegal. But it does raise concerns from a transparency perspective, experts say, when settlements are made behind closed doors without the public’s knowledge.
“They may not feel obligated to disclose all those transactions, but … even if insurance pays for something, the premium could end up going up and the public may still have questions about any one of those transactions,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for government transparency. “... Just the fact that it happened is still a public record or a matter of public interest.”
Three fire departments in La Plata County – the Upper Pine, Los Pinos and Durango fire protection districts – as well as Durango School District 9-R have settled lawsuits in recent years, most for six-digit figures. And in most cases, liability insurance providers paid the plaintiffs. The terms of those settlement agreements, only some of which districts agreed to release, were never presented in public or subject to discussion by the elected boards that oversee the districts. In some cases, settlements are not signed by anyone representing the defendant.
Albrechta, Sells’ attorney, has represented hundreds of employees in litigation in Southwest Colorado over the last decade, including several terminated firefighters. And although he could not comment on any individual case, Albrechta has observed trends on a broad scale.
“I have seen some public employers take actions that appear to me to be aimed at preventing settlement agreements from becoming public information,” he wrote in an email to the Herald. “For instance, some public employers require settlement agreements to be approved in a public meeting by their governing board, where others take steps to avoid that process.”
Los Pinos Chief Josh Lorenzen did not return multiple requests for comment, except in a statement made by an attorney on behalf of all three departments.
Durango Fire Chief Randy Black also did not directly respond to emailed questions, but did previously make his opinions clear in a lengthy meeting with the Herald during the course of reporting.
Chief Evans responded to requests for comment over email but was obfuscatory, directed attention to other concerns and did not answer questions.
Although plaintiffs often want their stories known – and for taxpayers to know how much these lawsuits can cost – the secretive nature of the settlements generally prevents that.
“Over the years the most common thing I hear from clients is that they don’t want what happened to them to happen to someone else,” Albrechta wrote. “In theory, ensuring that the public is informed when a public entity pays out a settlement to a former employee would help hold that employer accountable to the general public.”
Two former captains and the state firefighters union filed a lawsuit against Evans on May 15, alleging that he illegally terminated the captains after they organized a union.
Evans said he could not comment on the active case.
Colorado’s state Legislature has formally declared, as a preamble to the state’s transparency laws, that “the formation of public policy is public business and may not be conducted in secret.”
“That’s a reason why we have open government laws – so that public business is conducted in public and the records are available so there can be scrutiny of any kind of transaction,” Roberts said.
It can be difficult to access settlement agreements through open records requests when they have been signed only by the plaintiff, or even prove that such agreements exist if the leaders don’t keep settlements they didn’t sign for their files.
“It has always been troubling to me when public entities attempt to hide settlement agreements,” Albrechta wrote.
Litigants who try to fight the single-signature provision are generally advised that they’ll never win.
“It did not feel good to sign a document that only I signed,” said one person bound by such an agreement, who the Herald agreed not to name because they were not authorized to speak about the settlement.
When La Plata County in 2023 settled a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the former deputy county manager for $45,000, the settlement was included in the publicly available agenda packet, a vote on the matter was noticed in advance, and the settlement was signed by the board chair.
The county followed the same process in 2019, when it settled a wrongful termination lawsuit for $125,000.
That’s not what fire districts in La Plata County tend to do. Nor did Durango School District 9-R when it settled a lawsuit earlier this year.
The school district was sued in August 2024 by the family of a Durango High School senior identified only by her initials “S.C.,” born with disabilities that left her nonverbal, non-ambulatory and in need of extensive support from paraeducators.
In March 2024, S.C., who was described in the civil complaint as having “lower cognitive abilities and less predictable body movements than a toddler,” was left near a kettle of boiling water in class and managed to spill it on herself, causing second-degree burns. The family alleged that the paraeducators and the district were at fault.
In March 2025, the parties agreed to dismiss the lawsuit. The district, relying on its liability insurance, paid the family $350,000 and consented to some specific improvements around how it trains staff and handles similar situations.
“The settlement was handled in accordance with district policy and Colorado law,” 9-R spokeswoman Karla Sluis wrote in an email to the Herald. “It was not discussed in a public Board meeting because it fell within the Superintendent’s authorized spending authority and was communicated to the Board in writing, not in a public session. There are no public meeting minutes that reference the settlement for this reason.”
This is common.
Typically, one or two people are given authority to negotiate on behalf of a district, and do so to end the litigation. This is a contrast to La Plata County, which has asked plaintiffs to sign agreements that become binding upon approval and signature of the board.
When in 2021 Los Pinos settled a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former Deputy Chief Kevin Ratzmann, the settlement was signed by the entire board.
“All directors signed the settlement agreement because the Plaintiff named each director individually as a defendant,” the district’s attorney, Floyd Smith, wrote in an email. “No additional approval was required.”
The agreement was never discussed or voted on outside executive session.
Los Pinos refused to release Ratzmann’s settlement when the Herald requested a copy under the Colorado Open Records Act in 2021. But it released the document in response to another CORA request this year, revealing that Ratzmann and his attorney were paid $55,000. Ratzmann remains subject to a nondisclosure clause, according to the settlement.
The same process was followed in 2025, when LPFPD settled a lawsuit with Jennifer Sokol. The former firefighter sued when she was terminated after requesting accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to protect her from a colleague, who was later convicted of assault and domestic violence related to an incident with Sokol.
Los Pinos paid Sokol and her attorney $125,000 under the terms of an agreement that also barred her from disclosing anything about the settlement. Nobody at the department signed the document and the board never publicly voted to approve the settlement agreement.
In 2019, Durango Fire Protection District settled a lawsuit with former Capt. Pete Tuck for $427,500, according to a settlement agreement obtained through a CORA request. Tuck had a heart attack on the job and alleged the department changed the physical requirements in his job description before terminating him for not complying with those requirements.
The DFPD Board of Directors delegated negotiating authority to then-Chief Hal Doughty, who settled the matter in mediation. Insurance covered all but $100,000 of the settlement, which did not go back to the board for a vote because “no additional approval was required,” the district’s human resources manager said.
The five lawsuits reviewed by the Herald are likely not the only payouts districts have made. But the size of the iceberg below, composed of settlements reached before anything was filed in court, is difficult to gauge.
These cases are a challenge for departments, chiefs say, because of privacy laws that tie their hands.
“The organizations cannot defend themselves by state law,” said DFPD Chief Black. “When we terminate somebody, we can say they’re terminated. We can’t explain why, we can’t give our justification, we can’t defend ourselves.”
Tuck, the firefighter who was terminated from DFPD in 2016 while recovering from a heart attack, echoed something Black alluded to as well – “In these things, no one wins.”
According to Smith, in a statement on behalf of all three fire chiefs, the departments’ interpretation of the law is that agreements, or even the names of plaintiffs, could not be included in public agenda packets for board meetings (although La Plata County has done exactly that several times in recent years).
Nondisclosure agreements also place tight guardrails around what districts can say, he pointed out.
“Although the non-disclosure provisions are frequently violated by the terminated employees in discussions with the press, the public entity cannot respond with details about the justifiable reasons for the termination,” Smith said.
However, Albrechta, the employment lawyer, said the confidentiality clauses are typically something demanded by employers, often to the chagrin of the employees suing them.
“From my experience, most employees would prefer if this information was public,” Albrechta wrote.
With another wrongful termination lawsuit against Upper Pine working its way through the legal system, departments say that their processes will not change.
“In short, until laws are changed which would allow public employers to openly discuss the reasons for termination the current approach is consistent with the current laws and will continue to be the procedure of the Districts,” Smith wrote.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
