The pool of people seeking money from Zayat Stables got more crowded in recent weeks as a judge in Kentucky's Fayette County Circuit Court consolidated two civil cases against the 2015 Triple Crown-winning owner. Trainer Rudy Rodriguez won a motion in late June to combine his civil case in Fayette County with an existing case between MGG Investments and Zayat Stables over $24 million in unpaid loans.
Rodriguez won a judgment against Zayat Stables in a New York court in late 2019 for $394,437.19 in unpaid training bills that his legal team says went back years.
MGG had objected to the motion before Judge Kimberly Bunnell, questioning whether the two cases had enough in common to be combined. After all, the company argued, Rodriguez had a judgment in his favor from a New York judge, but had nothing to do with the loan Zayat took out from MGG in 2016.
“Zayat Stables undoubtedly owes a lot of money to a lot of people,” read paperwork filed by MGG ahead of the judge's order to consolidate. “Allowing Rodriguez Racing into the case will only open up Pandora's box and cause all of Zayat Stables' other creditors to come out of the woodwork to join this case, regardless of the irrelevance of their claims to the matters before the Court in this case.”
Attorneys for Rodriguez Racing disputed that assertion and pointed out that in one monthly report alone, over $137,000 had been paid to creditors of Zayat Stables by the receiver in charge of winding down the Zayat Stables operation.
Rodriguez no longer trains horses for Zayat, according to court filings. In mid-October 2019, he alleged the stable owed him more than $600,000 in unpaid bills, and filed an agister's lien on Lezendary and Majid, the two Zayat horses still in his possession at the time. Justin Zayat, son of Zayat Stables founder Ahmed Zayat, told media the two sides had come to an agreement over the amount owed.
“He's a wealthy man. I'm a working guy,” Rodriguez said at the time. “It costs me a lot to run the stable, with salaries and workers' compensation. Whenever I talk to him, he says he's going to pay, he's going to pay. I told him, 'I can't carry you anymore.'”
Ahmed Zayat would later announce in a tweet in late October that Rodriguez was “back on the team,” showing Rodriguez with Ahmed and Justin Zayat in what would seem to be the Zayat Stables offices in New Jersey. That tweet has since been deleted.
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