United States District Court

On the eve that Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI) and the New York Racing Association, Inc. (NYRA) were scheduled to appear at separate enforcement hearings in front of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority board to address disputes over their non-payment of assessment fees that are based partially on purses, those two prominent Thoroughbred track operators teamed up to sue the Authority and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in federal court, alleging that both the fee impositions and the attempted enforcement actions for non-payment are "illegal." According to the civil complaint...

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...

A federal judge in California on Monday terminated a nearly two-year-old lawsuit initiated against the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) by Thoroughbred owner Jerry Jamgotchian that alleged Jamgotchian's constitutional and civil rights were violated when the stewards at Los Alamitos Race Course denied entry to one of his horses in 2022 over a naming and registration controversy. Although the Aug. 12 ruling out of United States District Court (Central District, Southern Division) quashed the lawsuit itself, the litigation has never stopped the now 5-year-old Malpractice Meuser (GB) (Helmet {Aus}) from...

The former Standardbred trainer Rene Allard, 35, who was third in North America in both wins and purse earnings in the year before he was arrested and indicted in the March 2020 international doping conspiracy investigation, on Tuesday got sentenced to 27 months in a federal prison after having previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of misbranding and altering drugs. Allard's sentence was handed down Nov. 15, shortly after the same judge in United States District Court (Southern District of New York) sent the racetrack veterinarian Louis Grasso to...

Thirty-four days after being found guilty by jury trial on two felony counts of conspiring to violate adulteration and misbranding laws in the nationwide racehorse doping case, the Florida-based veterinarian Seth Fishman made a motion in federal court asking for the first of those counts to be dismissed on the basis that it is allegedly "multiplicitous of" (already contained within) the second, much broader conspiracy. Fishman's Mar. 8 filing in United States District Court (Southern District of New York) is likely the first of several legal steps leading to a...

The trial of alleged doping conspirator Jason Servis got pushed back to early 2023 at a status conference in federal court on Thursday. Robert Gearty of the Blood-Horse first broke the Feb. 24 story from United States District Court (Southern District of New York). Gearty reported that the former trainer's trial will take place in the first quarter of 2023 along with that of veterinarian Alexander Chan. Previously, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil had been aiming for a mid-2022 trial for Servis, the most prominent name among the remaining defendants asserting...

Marcos Zulueta, the former mid-Atlantic-based trainer with an abnormally high win percentage who was caught on wiretaps procuring drugs for and boasting about Thoroughbred performance-enhancing regimens with the convicted horse doper Jorge Navarro, was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison on Thursday. Zulueta, 53, had pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of adulterating and misbranding drugs with the intent to defraud or mislead. As part of a plea agreement, he had previously agreed to forfeit $47,525. At his Feb. 24 sentencing, the remaining two open felony charges...

Kristian Rhein, a suspended veterinarian formerly based at Belmont Park who was caught on a wiretap bragging that he sold "assloads" of SGF-1000 to racehorse trainers, was sentenced to three years imprisonment Wednesday after pleading guilty to one felony charge within the federal government's sprawling prosecution of an allegedly years-long conspiracy to dope racehorses. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil imposed the maximum-allowable prison term under federal sentencing guidelines Jan. 5 in United States District Court (Southern District of New York). According to the court order filed in conjunction with his sentencing,...

Seth Fishman and federal prosecutors are at odds over what types of evidence and expert testimony will be admissible in court when the veterinarian who allegedly made and sold purportedly performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) goes on trial in early 2022. In the form of dueling motions filed by each party Dec. 1 in  United States District Court (Southern District of New York), the two sides sparred over whether a jury should hear a wide range of evidence that involves what the government is alleging as Fishman "specifically target[ing] clients in the...