N.Y. Supreme Court rules Rice's injunction will remain in place, doesn't act on other motions
A New York Supreme Court judge has ruled that a temporary injunction granted to Linda Rice allowing her to train while she appeals a three-year suspension should remain in place until an appeals court hears her case.
The judge, Mark L. Powers of the New York Supreme Court, ruled for Rice in the decision to keep the injunction in place, but he passed on Rice’s motions for the court to declare that the rule applied to her suspension was unconstitutionally “vague” and that her penalty was “arbitrary and capricious.”
The order will move the issues involved in the case to New York’s Appellate Division. In New York, the Supreme Court hears cases involving so-called Article 78 proceedings, in which plaintiffs seek rulings on the law applied during regulatory cases.
Rice was handed the three-year-suspension by the New York Gaming Commission last summer, six months after the board conducted the last of eight days of hearings into allegations that Rice was routinely provided with the names of horses expected to be entered in races prior to entry time, from a period running from 2012 to August 2014. The board had alleged that the practice violated a rule prohibiting “improper, corrupt, or fraudulent acts or practice in relation to racing.”
Rice’s Article 78 motion argued that the commission had failed to present substantial evidence during her hearing and that the regulation cited by the commission was “unconstitutionally void for vagueness.” The motion also argued that the penalty was capricious because other trainers had also been provided similar information but avoided prosecution, and that the three-year penalty was “disproportionate to the offense” and “an abuse of discretion.”
While Powers wrote in his ruling that he sympathized with several of her arguments, he ultimately declined to void the regulation on the vagueness argument, saying that case law requires an assessment of “actual conduct” and “whether the regulation provided fair warning that such conduct violated the regulation.”
“Although Ms. Rice argues that the benefit of such information was insignificant to her, it is clear that it provided an advantage which she knew other trainers did not possess,” Powers wrote. “It strains credulity to accept that Ms. Rice simply believed that the extent to which she received pre-draw information was common practice and not antithetical to the horse racing industry.”
Although Powers declined to rule in Rice’s favor on those arguments, the entire case is expected to be re-litigated when it goes to the Appellate Division.
Rice has started more than 300 horses since the injunction was granted in the summer of last year and won with approximately 16 percent of them. She is perennially among the leading trainers at New York Racing Association tracks.