legal dispute | Horse Racing Free Tips

Bob Baffert filed a legal response Friday to the New York Racing Association (NYRA)'s recent attempt to dismiss his amended civil complaint, in which the Hall-of-Fame trainer is fighting an allegedly “sham” hearing process initiated by NYRA to determine if he will be excluded from New York's premier tracks.

The Dec. 10 filing in United States District Court (Eastern District of New York) rebutted and reargued a number of legal points that have already been volleyed back and forth by both sides since Baffert filed the initial version of his lawsuit June 14.

But one updated section lets the judge know about the Dec. 3 urine test results that the trainer's legal team claims “have confirmed scientifically” that the betamethasone in Medina Spirit's system after the colt won the GI Kentucky Derby came from a topical ointment and not an intra-articular injection.

Yet this new information about Medina Spirit's urine was imparted in the filing without any mention of the tragic turn of events that took place about 72 hours after those test results were made public, when the Derby winner collapsed and died after laboring through a workout at Santa Anita Park.

It's understandable that Medina Spirit's Dec. 6 death is not a legal point that Baffert's counsel considers relevant to the case, which deals primarily with allegations and incidents that occurred months ago.

But to a layman reading the court filing with the knowledge that Medina Sprit's untimely and sudden passing rocked the sports world and dominated the international racing news this week, it does come across as a jarring omission of context in the overall saga.

“Unfortunately, NYRA refused to wait for the results of the aforementioned testing or to otherwise allow the comprehensive administrative process which must take place in Kentucky to play out,” Baffert's filing stated.

“Instead, on May 17, 2021, prior to the initiation of any administrative processes in Kentucky, NYRA took the unprecedented step of announcing that it was immediately and indefinitely suspending Baffert from entering horses in racetracks that it operates, including Belmont Park, Saratoga Race Course, and Aqueduct Racetrack,” the filing continued.

NYRA had banished the seven-time GI Kentucky Derby-winning trainer 16 days after Medina Spirit tested positive for a betamethasone. But NYRA's stated desire to rule off Baffert goes beyond Medina Spirit's still-in-limbo Derby penalization status, which has not yet even resulted in a Kentucky Horse Racing Commission hearing.

In the 12 months prior to Medina Spirit's positive, four other Baffert trainees also tested positive for medication overages, two of them in Grade I stakes, and this has been a key plank in NYRA's argument.

On July 14, the court granted Baffert a preliminary injunction that currently allows him to race at New York's premier tracks until his lawsuit gets adjudicated in full.

But the judge also wrote in that ruling that “Baffert should have been given notice of all of the reasons that NYRA intended to suspend him.”

So in the wake of that decision, NYRA drafted a new set of procedures for holding hearings and issuing determinations designed to suspend licensees who engage in injurious conduct. On Sept. 10, NYRA then summoned Baffert to appear at an exclusion hearing.

Baffert first filed a motion asking the judge to hold NYRA in civil contempt for trying to schedule such a hearing and to stay the hearing itself. When those requests were denied, he amended his original complaint to try and keep that hearing process from moving forward (it's currently scheduled to begin Jan. 24).

When NYRA previously addressed the issue of the hearing in court documents, it termed Baffert's characterization of the process as “misguided,” noting that “Plaintiff s argument that he had no notice of the conduct prohibited by NYRA likewise fails given that common law has long recognized the standards and interests NYRA intends to uphold.”

NYRA had also previously pointed out to the judge that it was “providing Plaintiff exactly what he argued he was entitled to in support of his motion for a preliminary injunction–notice and an opportunity to be heard.”

On Friday, Baffert's filing contended that, “Shockingly, NYRA's Motion to Dismiss even asks this Court to dismiss the [civil action for deprivation of rights claim] on which Baffert has already prevailed. Baffert's Amended Complaint states valid claims for each of the five causes of action…NYRA's Motion to Dismiss should be denied in its entirety.”

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Even though trainer Bob Baffert has secured only a preliminary injunction in his ongoing lawsuit against the New York Racing Association (NYRA) that allows him to race at New York's three major tracks pending the final resolution of the case, his attorneys filed a motion in federal court Aug. 25 seeking $162,086 in legal fees and expenses from NYRA based on the claim that Baffert is due that money as the “prevailing party.”

The three attorneys Baffert engaged for work on this case have billed him at rates between $450 and $975 hourly, according to court filings in which the lawyers detailed their costs. NYRA on Wednesday countered with its own court filing, which came in the form of a “notice of motion to dismiss” the original complaint. Essentially, that response was NYRA's way of telling Baffert's legal team that the case is not yet over.

According to a schedule that had been ordered back on July 22 by Judge Carol Bagley Amon of United States District Court (Eastern District of New York), NYRA had until Aug. 27 to “serve, but not file, its motion to dismiss.” Oral arguments for that motion aren't even scheduled until Nov. 16.

In a civil complaint filed by Baffert June 14, the seven-time GI Kentucky Derby-winning trainer had alleged that NYRA's banishment of him since May 17 over the issue of his repeated equine drug violations violates his constitutional right to due process.

On July 14, the eve of the lucrative Saratoga Race Course season, Amon granted Baffert a preliminary injunction, writing in her order, “I find that Baffert has established a likelihood of proving that NYRA's suspension constituted state action, and that the process by which it suspended him violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Yet Amon also wrote, “although NYRA's actions have functionally deprived Baffert of his trainer's license, NYRA has not formally suspended that license. In sum, it is not likely that Baffert will be able to prevail on his claim that NYRA had no legal authority to take the action that it did.”

In Tuesday's filing on behalf of Baffert, his attorneys wrote, “Baffert qualifies as a prevailing party in this suit because the Court entered a preliminary injunction against NYRA enjoining it from enforcing its indefinite suspension of Baffert from all of its thoroughbred racetracks…”

The filing continued: “Under any view of the case, Baffert has fully prevailed on all of his due process claims asserted under Section 1983….It further cannot be disputed that the Court's Opinion altered the legal relationship between the parties by nullifying NYRA's suspension of Baffert–he is no longer barred from participating in NYRA races and he has entered horses at Saratoga as a direct consequence of the Court's order. As a result, Baffert has essentially achieved his main objective in this litigation [and] the Court's preliminary injunction is to Baffert the functional equivalent of a final judgment on the merits with respect to his claims and relief sought.”

One of Baffert's attorneys, the Kentucky-based W. Craig Robertson, the lead counsel in the case, wrote in a declaration that accompanied the motion that he charged Baffert $475 hourly for his work, and that his hourly fee and those of his firm's associate attorneys ($255 and $220), plus a paralegal ($265), are “well within the range of typical fees charged in commercial litigation cases in this District.”

Another attorney retained by Baffert since the inception of the case, the New York-based Charles Michael, wrote in a separate declaration, “my $975 hourly rate is within the reasonable rate customarily charged by attorneys with comparable experience.”

A third attorney, the Oklahoma-based Clark Brewster, wrote that he billed $450 hourly since being retained July 3, and “the rate charged to Baffert is reasonable with respect to equine matters and the rates fall within the standard range for commercial and equine litigators.”

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