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Trainer Mike Maker filed a motion for summary judgment against multiple Eclipse Award-winning owner/breeders Ken and Sarah Ramsey in Kentucky's Fayette Circuit Court on July 14, alleging that the couple have once again stopped paying their training bills.

Maker brought suit against the Ramseys in March 2021, alleging he was owed $905,357.29, which at the time was an improvement on the $1.25 million he had been owed in summer 2020. Ken Ramsey told this and other publications at the time of the filing that he expected to reach an agreement with Maker to finish paying off the bills and convince the trainer to drop the suit.

According to an affidavit filed by attorney Tyler Powell, Maker said Ramsey offered to pay $100,000 or more to him on or before the 15th of each month — and for a while, he did. Maker notes payments of $127,531.70 in March, $131, 290 in April, and $160,000 in May. After that, however, Maker said the payments stopped. In the meantime, the horses the Ramseys still had in Maker's barn continued running up bills in March and April, eroding some of his progress on the outstanding balance. Maker says the Ramseys now owe $505,385.92, and that figure doesn't include attorneys' fees associated with pursuing the outstanding balance.

Maker had filed UCC-1 financing statements with the Kentucky Secretary of State around the time he filed his civil suit, placing liens on the 27 horses he still had in his care at the time. His July 14 motion states he no longer has Ramsey horses in his barn.

The motion filed this week points out that Ken Ramsey hasn't contested that he owes the money.

“It's not that I'm not paying, it's just that I guess I'm not paying fast enough,” Ken Ramsey told the Paulick Report in March 2021. “I have never beaten anybody out of a dime.”

Maker requests a summary judgment from the court against the couple, and that motion is scheduled to be heard at the end of the month.

Trainer Wesley Ward also filed suit against the couple in March 2021, claiming he was owed $974,790.40 in unpaid training bills, his portion of purses, and interest. Ward placed liens on 44 horses in his care at the time he brought his civil suit. That case also remains open in Jessamine Circuit Court.

The Ramseys have won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Owner four times (2004, 2011, 2013, and 2014) and the award for Outstanding Breeder twice (2013 and 2014). Since 2000, Equibase reports the couple has won 2,223 races from 9,814 starts for total earnings of more than $98 million. Their annual earnings have fallen from their peak in 2013 of over $12 million, and last year the stable brought in $2.3 million from 274 starts. Their Ramsey Farm in Nicholasville, Ky., was the longtime base for the operation's homebred and centerpiece stallion, Kitten's Joy, who relocated to Hill 'n' Dale in 2018.

The post Maker Files New Motion In Civil Case Against Ramseys, Alleges Payments Have Stopped appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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My sincere thanks to Ms. Sue Finley for the compelling article about the Man O' War Project in the TDN Thursday. I whole heartedly appreciate Earle Mack's support of our veterans.

I have only mentioned my own personal story about PTSD to a few people. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 my father left Columbia University and enlisted in the Air Force. He was 17, turning 18. He went to Officers Training School and was promptly shipped to the South Pacific to work in the intelligence corps. His job was to set up airfields for reconnaissance once the Marines had taken an island. You can imagine the carnage he saw with the Japanese scorched-earth policies in full force and in full view to a young man not yet 20. The indigenous people suffered enormously. It affected my father deeply.

When he returned from the South Pacific, he finished up at Columbia, then moved to Lexington to find a position in the horse business. He worked for Keene Daingerfield at the Thoroughbred Record (later, better known as the Dean of Kentucky Stewards). Experiencing difficulty adjusting to civilian life, did he self-diagnose some sort of stress disorder and know that he needed to reconnect with horses to reprogram his psyche? One wonders. The whole concept of PTSD had not yet been identified at that time and men were supposed to buck up and push through the pain. It was a different era. It seems that something inscrutable drew him back to horses and he eventually readjusted to post-war life. He trained horses at Keeneland in the mornings before work in the late '40's while starting a family and working at The Record.

Later in life, when GE hired him for his first real job and he was transferred to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he took in layups from Suffolk Downs and the vibrant fair circuit in Massachusetts at our farm in Stockbridge. We were just an hour from Saratoga. I remember him taking me to the Travers when Jaipur beat Ridan by a nose in 1962.

He always had horses in his life until just a couple of years before he died, by suicide, at age 49 (when I was 19). My sister and I have often wondered if he had stayed physically connected to horses if he might have made it through the rough patch preceding his suicide and enjoyed a full life.

He only spoke about his South Pacific experience once to me, when I threatened to leave home to enlist during the Vietnam War era, because we had argued, and it had turned violent. I was 18. But he knew that war was as close to hell as life can be and he did not want that for me, or on his conscience. He was gone a year later.

My sister and I have both kept horses in our lives; my wife Mary and I have five retired racehorses at our farm here in Kentucky and my sister has three warmbloods at her ranch in Los Alamos, California. It is our lifeline at times too, and perhaps an homage to our late father who connected us with horses, for life.

The research Earle Mack has funded is meaningful. If it saves one veteran's life, it was worth whatever he invested in the Project. I tip my hat to him and say thanks.

Best regards,

Joel B. Turner

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