By admin 
A San Miguel County district judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the owner of Telluride ski area against local leaders who orchestrated a failed plan to buy the ski area.
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District Judge Laura E. H. Harvell said Chuck Horning’s lawsuit against former Mountain Village Mayor Marti Prohaska, former Telluride Mayor Pro Tem Meehan Fee and former Mountain Village town manager Paul Wisor “fails to state a plausible claim.” Harvell agreed with the trio, dismissing the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled, saying that Horning’s “claim is deficient.”
Horning, who has owned the Telluride ski area for more than 20 years, this summer sued the three local leaders, arguing they used their positions to “coerce” Horning to sell the resort with a promise they would end a strike by ski patrollers, who stopped working in late December after months of failed labor negotiations. Investigations by the two towns found the three leaders did not break any laws in designing the offer to buy 51% of the ski resort.
Prohaska said the judge’s “resounding rejection” reveals Horning’s claims “as baseless” with “an utter lack of facts or logic.”
“Mr. Horning had no qualms about stoking a conspiracy, and wasting time and money on an unwinnable case, because it was always about dodging responsibility for the economic damage caused by the ski patrol strike,” she said in an email to The Sun. “He was presented with an opportunity that could have drastically improved the future of this destination, and he could have taken credit for modeling a new paradigm for the ski industry. Yet instead of simply declining the offer, he chose to distort the intent into a made-up story that served to protect his ego.”
Horning closed the ski area for 10 days during the strike over the New Years holiday, battering the Telluride area’s tourist-dependent economy that relies on late December visitor traffic. Net taxable sales in Telluride fell 11% in the November-March 2025-26 ski season, compared with the previous season. Mountain Village saw spending fall 19.5% in the 2025-26 season compared with 2024-25. That’s almost five times the decline in 18 other ski towns that endured the weakest snowfall in 50 years and the steepest annual decline in visitation since the early 1990s last winter.
Horning and the town towns have spent years arguing. The towns supported increased taxes to force more support from Horning for the public gondola connecting the two towns. They tried to raise water rates for snowmaking. They argued over resort investment as Horning slashed spending. Horning, in turn, complained about the lack of local support for the remote ski area.
Horning spent many months negotiating with his ski patrollers who wanted better pay to live in the expensive communities around the ski area. After those negotiations failed, the patrollers went on strike after Christmas last year and Horning, in response, closed the ski area. Locals marched in the street urging both sides to return to the table and hammer out an agreement to end the strike.
At the same time, Prohaska and Fee joined Wisor in organizing a group of local investors to buy controlling interest in the ski area. Horning invited the women to his Southern California office to hear their offer. He never signed the agreement and shared it with the two communities, leading to an outcry that forced Fee, Prohaska and Wisor to resign.
In his complaint, Horning said the two elected leaders told him they would end the strike if he sold. When the sale deal did not happen, Horning, in his lawsuit, said the two leaders “provoked” the ski patrollers to continue the strike.
“This is fatal to Telski’s claim”
Fee and Prohaska, in their motion to dismiss Horning’s lawsuit, said they never influenced the ski patrollers.
Harvell agreed with the arguments in the motion to dismiss, saying the Telluride Ski and Golf Co.’s complaint “merely alleges inaction by Fee and Prohaska to intervene in the strike.”
“This is fatal to Telski’s claim because mere inaction alone cannot constitute a wrongful act,” Harvell’s ruling reads. “The fact that they made some vague promises to intervene in the strike if Telski accepted their proposal is not sufficient to support a viable claim.”
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Harvell said the two politicians did not have any legal authority to force the ski patroller union to return to work. So they could not have played any role in the ski area’s loss of “millions of dollars in revenue” during Horning’s closure of the resort from Dec. 27 through Jan. 7.
Horning, in an email to The Sun, said “running a remote resort is challenging” and Telluride Ski and Golf “is still far from almost every other resort in terms of revenue.” He says the few remote resorts in Europe — like Lech and St. Anton in Austria and Zermatt and St. Moritz in Switzerland, took “multiple generations to become sustainable.”
He’s making progress, he said, pointing to the Alpino Vino restaurant and other improvements to the ski area, but “it’s a long, long challenge.”
“It’s rewarding, other than dealing with the political powers that have, in some cases, become increasingly ineffective as a result of antiquated processes,” he said.
“I’m glad the court saw this for what it was”
Both Fee and Prohaska resigned in the wake of the deal. Wisor, who scripted a nondisclosure agreement for the purchase deal, also left his position at town manager.
Wisor said he was pleased “but not surprised” by the ruling.
“What was always clear to me was that this was always about Chuck trying to take from Marti and Meehan the one thing he could never have himself: the community’s respect, trust, and a genuine vision for this region,” Wisor said. “I’m glad the court saw this for what it was.”
Wisor said the “meritless accusations” and lawsuit “did a remarkably effective job of distracting from the ski patrol strike.”
“It has always astounded me that TSG decided to spend its resources on this distraction,” he said, “rather than investing those same resources into supporting all of its employees and improving the guest experience.”
Wisor said Horning was aware of the offer when he invited Fee and Prohaska to his office.
“If he was seeking to do anything other than create chaos, he could have just said no,” Wisor said.
And that’s the most troubling aspect for Prohaska.
“Playing these kinds of games at the cost of a community’s well-being is unconscionable, in my opinion, especially when there are so many areas Telski could focus its energy and attention that would benefit the company and community mutually,” she said. “But, as has been the case for decades now, I’m confident the Telluride and Mountain Village communities and governments will continue to step up to make our destination the best it can be.”
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