Baffert Wins Attorneys’ Fees from NYRA

[Wandering Eyes]

A federal judge has ordered that the New York Racing Association (NYRA) must pay trainer Bob Baffert $109,124 in legal expenses. Those fees and costs were incurred in the early stages of the trainer's civil rights lawsuit against NYRA, and the court has determined that legal precedents qualified him as the “prevailing party” five months ago when he obtained a preliminary injunction to overcome NYRA's banishment of him from Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct.

That figure represents only a partial award. The Hall-of-Fame trainer had been seeking $162,086.

NYRA had argued that he wasn't entitled to the money based on the fact that the overall case has not been fully adjudicated.

But Judge Carol Bagley Amon of United States District Court (Eastern District of New York).wrote in a Dec. 15 order that Baffert does indeed qualify for some reimbursement, quoting from the relevant precedents in her ruling.

“First, the preliminary injunction was decided on the merits of Baffert's claims. Over 10 pages of [my] 27-page preliminary injunction opinion were dedicated to finding 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…'

“Accordingly, the preliminary injunction was 'governed by [an] assessment of the merits' as required by [precedent]. Second, the preliminary injunction was against a state actor that later  changed its procedures, mooting the question. Rather than appeal the preliminary injunction, NYRA changed its suspension procedures such that trainers can no longer be suspended without a pre-suspension hearing….

“Therefore, because Baffert 'neutralized and then caused to be superseded a [state action he]  persuasively argued was unconstitutional' and because 'the preliminary injunction [he] secured  was never reversed, dissolved, or otherwise undone,' Baffert has, 'unavoidably, prevailed.'”

Amon continued: “At oral argument, Baffert also agreed not to seek damages on his [civil action] claim related to the May 2021 suspension should I grant him attorneys' fees. With this concession, the portion of this case related to the subject matter of the preliminary injunction is complete. That there will be no additional litigation on this topic belies NYRA's worry that there will be serial attorneys' fee litigation regarding the subject matter of the preliminary injunction. Accordingly, I find that attorneys' fees on the preliminary injunction are appropriate at this time.”

NYRA had barred Baffert back on May 17, a bit more than two weeks after the now-deceased Medina Spirit won the GI Kentucky Derby while testing positive for an overage of betamethasone.

In the 12 months prior to that positive, four other Baffert trainees had also tested positive for medication overages, two of them in Grade I stakes. NYRA didn't want him racing or training at New York's premier tracks because of that pattern of drug positives.

Baffert responded to NYRA's ruling-off by filing a June 14 civil complaint alleging that the NYRA ban violated his constitutional right to due process.

On July 14, the eve of the Saratoga season, the court granted Baffert a preliminary injunction that allowed him to race at New York's premier tracks until the lawsuit was adjudicated in full.

Some of the attorneys who argued Baffert's case to that point billed the seven-time Derby-winning trainer between $450 and $975 hourly.

On Aug. 25, Baffert petitioned the court to get NYRA to pay for the legal costs he had incurred to that point.

 

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