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The former Aspen Times editor who sued the paper over the termination of his employment plans to file an amended complaint in Pitkin County District Court this week after a judge dismissed all four claims from his existing complaint earlier this month.
Andrew Travers claimed in a complaint filed in October that the Times and its parent companies — West Virginia-based Ogden Newspapers and its subsidiary Swift Communications Inc. — injured him through breach of contract, promissory estoppel (breaking of a promise), negligent misrepresentation and intentional misrepresentation (accidental and knowing fraud) when they fired him in June 2022. Travers also had claimed relief for wrongful discharge but removed that claim in an amended complaint filed in November.
District Court Judge Denise Lynch said in a Feb. 2 order that she was dismissing Travers' claims because the complaint’s account of his termination did not support them, regardless of whether they were true. Lynch said the promises Ogden personnel are alleged to have broken in Travers' suit were not specific enough to be legally enforceable and did not strip Ogden of its legal right to fire him whenever they chose under Colorado law.
Lynch issued her order after Ogden filed a motion to dismiss Travers' claims on Nov. 27. In that motion, attorneys from the Denver law firm Littler Mendelson P.C. argued that Travers had no contract that Ogden would have broken by firing him. The motion also stated that Travers was an “at-will” employee of the Times and could therefore be terminated at any time and without legal recourse under state law.
Travers' attorney, Darold Killmer of the Denver law firm Killmer, Lane & Newman LLP, said Monday that Lynch dismissed the claims “without prejudice,” meaning the dismissal was not based on the merits of the case, but on the way Travers and his attorneys made their allegations. Killmer said his firm has “beefed up” the allegations in an amended complaint they plan to file on Thursday at the latest.
Travers' original complaint argued that Ogden personnel broke verbal promises they made to him when the company terminated his employment as editor-in-chief on June 10, 2022. At the time, Travers held the position for little more than a day.
According to the complaint, Travers accepted the position only after several Ogden employees told him he would have “editorial independence” in the job. In particular, the complaint said Ogden staff members told Travers he would be free to publish articles regarding Russian businessman Vladislav Doronin, who had recently purchased nearly one acre of land on the west side of Aspen Mountain (known as the “Lift 1A parcel”) in a controversial transaction. The complaint states that Doronin had sued Ogden over The Aspen Times’ coverage of the purchase, objecting to the paper’s description of him as a “Russian oligarch,” among other things.
According to the complaint, Scott Stanford, group publisher for Swift’s newspapers in Colorado and Utah, and Aspen Times Publisher Allison Pattillo told Travers he could publish two previously spiked columns regarding Doronin’s purchase by columnist Roger Marolt on June 10, after Ogden and Doronin had settled their lawsuit out of court. The complaint also states that Pattillo assented to the publication of internal Aspen Times communications in which staff decided to spike the columns.
But when Travers published the columns that day, Stanford came into the Aspen Times office and fired him, according to the complaint.
“Specifically, Mr. Stanford told Mr. Travers that he was being terminated for running the columns by Mr. Marolt and related documents in The Aspen Times,” the lawsuit says.
Marolt’s spiked columns are still accessible on the Aspen Times website, though they have been edited, according to an editor’s note. Any internal communications between Times’ employees regarding the initial removal of the columns are not currently included with the columns.
Lynch’s order dismissing Travers’ claims argues that the conversations he had with Ogden personnel did not prevent Ogden from using its right as an at-will employer to terminate Travers’ employment at any time without cause. Under Colorado law, employers may fire employees without cause and without notice so long as those employees have an indefinite time limit on their employment and employers have not willingly entered an agreement limiting their ability to fire workers, according to the order.
“The Alleged promisors' (including Pattillo’s and Stanford’s) statements addressed Travers’ concerns about whether the Defendants would refrain from censoring the Times’ publications during the course of his employment,” Lynch’s order states. “Such assurances are not sufficient to overcome the presumption of ‘at will’ employment because they do not address the duration of Travers’ employment, much less with the specificity demanded for a contract term to be enforceable.”
The order further states that Ogden personnel’s alleged promises of “editorial discretion” are vague and that Travers failed to demonstrate that this discretion included the ability to publish internal communications at the newspaper.
In Travers' amended complaint, Killmer said they will return with the same claims but with more specificity.
“(Lynch) was concerned about whether these were just vague, general promises of job security on the one hand, which might not be legally enforceable,” Killmer said, “compared with what they really are, which is very specific representations that if Andrew Travers published opinion and news related to the Lift 1A parcel, and Doronin … he wouldn't be retaliated against.”
Travers said in a phone interview that he remains dedicated to his objective in bringing the suit against Ogden.
“My goal here is to hold Ogden accountable for what they have done to The Aspen Times and to this community and for abnegating their role as the paper of record in Aspen,” Travers said. “I'm trying to right a wrong here, and I remain committed to doing that.”
Pattillo and Stanford both declined to comment on this story.