Barry Baker, a Park City businessman known for his involvement in the Democratic Party, filed a lawsuit against Glenwild Golf Club last month, alleging the club targeted and retaliated against whistleblowers who reported financial mismanagement and criminal conduct.

Attorneys representing Glenwild Golf Club filed a motion to dismiss last week, however. They claim the club’s bylaws protect the board from retaliatory lawsuits filed by club members, asserting any issues Baker has with the golf club need to be resolved through dispute resolution instead.

Glenwild Golf Club, a premier course designed by well-known architect Tom Fazio, opened in the early 2000s. Baker, who moved to the Park City area in 2002, was a founding member of the club, invested over $30 million in the community, built a 26,000 square-foot home near the golf course and recruited over 25 other members to join the club, according to the complaint he filed in Summit County’s Third District Court.

A buyout on behalf of club members occurred in 2018. But in the six years since the takeover, the complaint says, “Glenwild has been plagued by fiscal mismanagement and worse.”

“The club squandered over half of its $12 million in reserves, leaving it in precarious financial condition,” court documents allege. “It also, sadly, has engaged in criminal conduct, with the club’s management implementing a program to sell wine in the clubhouse that the club had illegally bootlegged from Wyoming in circumvention of Utah’s strict alcohol distribution laws.”

Baker and other club members criticized the club’s board of directors. The disputes “came to head” in 2022 when Baker learned of the reportedly illegal wine program. At the time, the board was “also in the midst of discussions regarding an ill-conceived plan that would have given the board the power to strip the members’ equity to zero,” according to the complaint.

In response to members’ criticism, the board “responded by publicly threatening that [they] would suspend or terminate any member found to be ‘socializing dissatisfaction amongst the membership.’” This led to the suspension of Baker’s membership in 2023.

“While the board agreed to reinstate Mr. Baker’s membership once it learned that he was prepared to reveal the complicity of Board members in the illegal wine program, the board has maintained a vendetta against Mr. Baker and sought opportunities to retaliate against him,” the complaint claims.

Baker was suspended for a second time in December 2024 for one year, in what Baker’s attorneys described as “a pattern of Soviet-style justice administered by the board.”

According to court documents, the board sent Baker a letter accusing him of abusing staff and requested Baker appear at a hearing “to defend himself.”

“Then, when Mr. Baker asked the board to substantiate its allegations (or provide the records supporting its claims), the board refused, instead providing curated summaries of alleged witness complaints contending that Mr. Baker was ‘intimidating,’ ‘abusive’ and ‘threatening,’” the complaint says. “These allegations were preposterous. Mr. Baker has been a member at 17 other golf clubs as well as private non-golf social clubs without a single disciplinary issue having ever been raised. And he has been a member of Glenwild for over two decades without a single prior disciplinary incident.”

Baker’s attorneys contacted the witnesses mentioned by the board, who “stated they had never made any such complaints against Mr. Baker nor would have had any basis to.”

“Upon being informed that the very witnesses the board claimed Mr. Baker had abused were prepared to testify that those allegations were false, the board abruptly changed course, telling Mr. Baker that no witnesses would be allowed at the hearing, no evidence would be taken, and his lawyers would not be allowed to participate,” the complaint states.

The hearing was then allegedly held in secret in “blatant violation” of the club’s bylaws.

The lawsuit also claims that Baker is not the only member who has been targeted by the board. 

It mentions another “longstanding Glenwild member” who was suspended for contacting Fazio, the course’s architect, to discuss renovations, and two other members who were “recently threatened with discipline” for offering to share a recording of a Zoom call with the board, “even though the board’s president had stated during the meeting that the video could be shared with any members who were interested.”

Additionally, Baker alleged the board of directors packed the nominating committee, preventing new members from joining the board and denying Glenwild’s members “the ability to change management of the nonprofit that they supposedly control.” He also claimed the board refuses to provide books and records to members and failed to file nonprofit disclosures required by Utah Code.

“The board’s oppressive conduct has unfortunately injected a poison into the sense of community that once prevailed at Glenwild,” the complaint says. “Resignations at the club have hit an all-time high, with a waiting list of members trying to exit the club that stretches into the dozens. And with word spreading in the local golf community about the board’s toxic mismanagement, the number of people interested in purchasing new memberships has been scant. This threatens the club’s very existence.”

State law permits a court to “dissolve a nonprofit corporation if it is established that the ‘directors or those in control of the nonprofit corporation have acted, are acting or will act in a manner that is illegal, oppressive or fraudulent,’” the lawsuit states.

For that reason, Baker claimed “it would be inequitable” to allow the club to continue engaging in its current conduct and that the board “breached [its] fiduciary duties by engaging in willful misconduct,” damaging Baker and the club “in an amount to be determined at trial.”

In addition to the civil lawsuit against the club and its board of directors, Baker filed a libel lawsuit — which relies on the same details outlined in the first lawsuit — claiming that he deserves relief due to “statements [that are] part of a coordinated and targeted effort to expel him permanently from the club” and “actions [that] constitute willful conduct and/or actual malice.”

Attorneys for Glenwild Golf Club filed motions to dismiss the two cases last week, stating the club’s bylaws protect board members “from the harassment and expense of a Club member retaliating against them by suing them in court.”

Instead, Baker is contractually obligated as a club member to resolve his disputes “through mandatory alternative dispute resolution.” Glenwild’s attorneys say Baker himself already initiated that process.

“Consequently, this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction, this is an improper venue, and plaintiff [Baker] has failed to state a claim, here, upon which relief can be granted. Thus this court should dismiss the complaint,” the motion to dismiss states.

The club’s attorneys additionally argue Baker and his legal team “corresponded frequently with Glenwild’s counsel” throughout the disciplinary process and “that correspondence also included inappropriate and groundless threats to sue anyone involved in plaintiff’s potential discipline for many millions of dollars.”

“Plaintiff, then and now, holds himself above the obligations to which he agreed in the bylaws, and sought to turn a simple disciplinary hearing into a full-blown trial, including proffering witnesses and evidence,” the motion says. “Glenwild’s board refused to pander to plaintiff’s arbitrary and petulant threats and demands.”

The board’s response claims Baker never accepted a hearing date, causing them to schedule the hearing last month regardless of his attendance.

“[Baker] responded to that notice by indicating he would not attend the hearing scheduled for Dec. 6, citing travel commitments, but in any event even if he were available, he was not inclined to attend the hearing,” Glenwild’s attorneys claim in court documents. “Given [Baker’s] utter lack of commitment to attend any hearing other than of his own character and creation, Glenwild’s board saw no reason to delay the hearing any further.”

Baker then decided to file a lawsuit rather than appealing the decision through the methods described in the club’s bylaws, according to the motion to dismiss.

Third District Court Judge Richard Mrazik has not yet issued an order regarding the motion, and there are currently no scheduled court dates.

The Park Record attempted to contact attorneys representing Glenwild Golf Club but did not receive a response by time of publication.

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