NYRA calls Baffert's request for legal fees 'premature'
The New York Racing Association argued in a court filing Monday that attorneys for Bob Baffert should not be awarded legal fees until the trainer’s appeal has been decided by the court, among other objections to the request.
NYRA, which had a ban on Baffert stayed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in July, called the request for legal fees by Baffert’s attorneys “premature” in the filing because “there has been no final determination of this matter.” Baffert’s attorneys made the request to award legal fees and expenses of $162,086 in late August.
The request for attorneys’ fees is only part of a back-and-forth legal tussle between Baffert and NYRA. While the initial ban was stayed, NYRA has approved an internal hearing process seeking a separate ban on Baffert, and his attorneys have filed objections to that hearing as well. Those arguments are set to be heard by the judge in early October.
“NYRA respectfully submits that a motion for an award of attorneys’ fees should be made, if appropriate, and decided after the conclusion of the entire action,” attorneys for NYRA wrote in the filing.
NYRA’s attorneys also said that “special circumstances make an award of fees unwarranted” given that courts have protected the right to recover attorneys’ fees in order to “incentivize attorneys to represent individual civil-rights plaintiffs that might otherwise be unrepresented and therefore have their rights go unvindicated,” the attorneys wrote.
“Plaintiff, the most prominent trainer in Thoroughbred racing, can afford to pay his lawyers and would have brought this action regardless of whether he could obtain an award of attorneys’ fees,” the filing states.
The filing also calls the request “disproportionately high and in excess of what courts in this District have deemed reasonable.”