RICO

Hawthorne Race Course and three of the track's key racing executives on Nov. 18 asked a federal judge to dismiss the main claims in a lawsuit brought by a former association veterinarian who recently worked the Chicago-area track's Thoroughbred meets. In a Sept. 12, 2024, legal complaint, Dr. Christine Tuma had alleged that her efforts to scratch over 80 lame or injured Thoroughbreds during 2022-23 were met with a purported conspiracy among track employees, other veterinarians, and state regulators to overturn her actions so unsound horses could be entered to...

Christine Tuma, who formerly worked as an association veterinarian jointly employed by Hawthorne Race Course and the Illinois Racing Board (IRB), on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against those two entities claiming her efforts to scratch over 80 lame or injured Thoroughbreds during the 2022 and 2023 race meets were met with an alleged conspiracy to overturn her actions so the unsound horses could be entered in races. The lawsuit further contended that when Tuma reported this alleged conspiracy to state and federal government regulators, she was fired "in retaliation...

Trainer Bob Baffert told a federal judge Wednesday that a group of bettors who are suing him in a class-action lawsuit alleging a years-long pattern of racketeering based on his purported "doping" of Thoroughbreds have twisted their case so far from reality that their alleged misstatements amount to libel. In a Jan. 12 filing in United States District Court (District of New Jersey), Baffert stated that the plaintiffs' recent attempt to portray him as the "Lance Armstrong of the horse racing world" is a "desperate conglomeration of highly inflammatory statements...designed...