The Colorado Golf Club in Parker claims it was right to expel a businessman after he allegedly broke into a men’s locker room and downed tequila shots with an underage employee.
“Mr. Evans’ behavior demonstrated disregard of the club, its members and its staff, and is not the type of behavior the club’s members expect,” CGC wrote in a Nov. 24 countersuit.
Cole Evans is CEO of Kiss Nutraceuticals in Denver, which makes dietary supplements. As he tells it, he was about to sell Kiss to Shore Capital Partners out of Chicago for “multiple eight figures” when he was kicked out of Colorado Golf Club in front of buyers, scuttling the deal.
That was in May 2023. Two and a half years later, Evans sued the club for breach of contract and asked a judge in Douglas County District Court to reinstate him as a member.
But last week, the club told a much different story as it countersued the business executive.
Evans, who had been a member of Colorado Golf Club for two years, reportedly triggered an alarm and motion detector when he trespassed into a men’s locker room at 11:21 p.m. on May 25, 2023, three hours after it had closed and after failing to open two locked doors.
At 12:42 a.m., Evans and two golf club employees set off another alarm while still inside the men’s locker room, according to the club’s countersuit. A security guard soon found the trio, one of whom was under the age of 21, drinking at a clubhouse bar and playing music.
“Mr. Evans would not provide his name but rather stated that he was a guest,” the countersuit says. “Mr. Evans also would not turn around or speak when security was questioning.”
The three were escorted out by security. The two employees were soon fired and Evans was approached by Colorado Golf Club’s president while having lunch there later that day.
Of note, the club’s countersuit claims Evans was allowed to finish his lunch with the purported Kiss buyers, who were unaware anything was amiss. Only months later, after a formal appeals process, was Evans told that he would be punished for his actions, the club says.
The club proposed a suspension through 2024, $30,000 in fines, a two-year suspension from golf tournaments, an indefinite ban on use of the Colorado Golf Club cottages, and assurance that Evans would “engage in self-improvement.” He reportedly turned down the offer.
“Mr. Evans took no responsibility for his actions on the night of May 25 and did not show any remorse,” the club says. “He was unconcerned that he asked employees to serve him alcohol in the middle of the night when the club was closed, that he drank at least five alcoholic beverages in a span of 90 minutes without paying (and) that one of the employees was underage.”
Evans claims he was expelled without due process and in a public way that ruined his business deal. The club says that allegation “lacks credibility and is indicative of a frivolous lawsuit.”
“Mr. Evans’ claim that a potential investor revoked a multi-million-dollar business venture because he was expelled … ignores the reality that Mr. Evans’ business dealings were the subject of litigation including claims for fraud and misrepresentation,” it wrote.
Evans and Kiss have often found themselves in court in recent years. Both are being sued in Denver by a lender for $328,000 and both were accused of posing as makers of hand sanitizer in 2020. They denied any wrongdoing but settled that case for $215,000. Evans also paid a $62,500 fine to the State of Colorado for misrepresenting the hand sanitizer.
Colorado Golf Club is suing Evans for breach of membership, civil theft and abuse of the legal process. It claims that Evans’ lawsuit has “an ulterior purpose — to retaliate against the club for enforcing its rules and to pressure the club to reinstate his membership.”
Evans’ lawyer, Stephen Scheffel of Thomas N. Scheffel & Associates, declined to discuss that. So did Linda Knight of Spencer Fane, who alongside Phoebe Schneider represent the club.
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