lawsuit

Defendants Ahmed Zayat, his family members, and the financially troubled Zayat Stables, LLC, are collectively asking a Kentucky court to dismiss a "fraudulent scheme" contract breach lawsuit by New York investment firm MGG Investment Group, LP, on the basis that the complaint has not been brought in the correct legal jurisdiction. Eric Mitchell of the Blood-Horse first reported the story Friday, citing Apr. 21 court documents. The January civil suit claimed that financially strapped Zayat family members allegedly orchestrated a years-long scheme "to sell at a steep discount several millions...

Judge Kim Bunnell ruled to dismiss the claims brought by the MGG Investment Group against Yeomanstown Stud in which they sought the return of the stallion El Kabeir in Fayette County (Ky.) Circuit Court Friday morning. Yeomanstown purchased the stallion from Ahmed Zayat's Zayat Stables Sept. 20, 2017, for $500,000. MGG was attempting to acquire the horse as part of its suits seeking the return of horses and breeding shares sold by the Zayats which had been pledged as collateral for $30 million in loans. Yeomanstown had moved to discuss...

A report in the Feb. 20 Lexington Herald-Leader, claims that Midwest trainer Tom Swearingen, who filed a class-action lawsuit in February 2019 alleging that Hagyard Davidson McGee Associates had been falsifying dates on radiographs for over a decade, admitted in a deposition that he never viewed or relied on X-rays during the years in question, nor did he have a veterinarian examine X-rays. "That is the foundation of his claim, and removing that foundation causes that whole complaint to collapse," Tom Miller, the attorney representing Dr. Robert Hunt, one of...

The New York lending firm that last month initiated a $23-million lawsuit against Ahmed Zayat and his financially troubled Zayat Stables, LLC, broadly amended its civil complaint in a Kentucky court earlier this week (click here). Zayat Stables issued the following statement Thursday regarding the amended complaint: "We are disappointed but not surprised at MGG and Kevin Griffin's aggressive attack on the horse industry. Zayat Stables said from the beginning that it wanted to liquidate certain assets to generate enough proceeds to pay off all of its creditors. Motivated purely...

Jay Ingle, an attorney with the Lexington, Kentucky-based law firm Jackson Kelly PLLC, released a statement on behalf of owner Ahmed Zayat Saturday morning addressing the complaint filed by trainer Mike Maker in Jefferson County Court this past Thursday seeking better than $120,000 in alleged unpaid training bills. "This lawsuit from Mike Maker is absurd," the statement read. "Ahmed Zayat made all payments required under his prior settlement with Mr. Maker until MGG seized control of Zayat Stables' bank account last month. It is outrageous for Mr. Maker to cry...

Ahmed Zayat has filed a motion asking the same court that appointed a receiver to oversee the assets of his Zayat Stables to dissolve that order and instead allow the stable to resolve its dispute with MGG Investment Group in some other matter. The filing came five days after a Fayette County (Ky) Circuit Court judge ordered Zayat's assets into receivership, a response to a $23-million civil lawsuit lodged by the investment firm, MGG Investment Group, LP. MGG had alleged that Zayat had defaulted on his loans and had improperly...

The $23-million lawsuit by a lender against Ahmed Zayat and his financially troubled Zayat Stables, LLC, was nearly four years in the making. But a series of red-flag events over the last four months put the alleged fraud more alarmingly into focus, sparking frantic efforts by the plaintiff to get the troubled racing and bloodstock business into court-mandated receivership before the equine assets used to secure $30 million in loans were potentially sold off and hidden. Although the major allegations in the civil lawsuit filed by MGG Investment Group, LP,...

A Fayette County, Kentucky judge granted a motion at an emergency hearing Wednesday to put Zayat Stables and its horses into receivership, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. The ruling follows a lawsuit filed by New York-based MGG Investment Group alleging that owner Ahmed Zayat had sold shares in Triple Crown-winning stallion American Pharoah that were being used as collateral against loans made by MGG to Zayat. MGG's lawsuit alleges that Zayat defaulted on his loans in September, and seeks at least $23 million from Zayat. According to the Herald-Leader, Zayat sent...