NYRA challenges Baffert's request for amended complaint

The New York Racing Association has challenged a request by attorneys for Bob Baffert to file an amended complaint in a case centering on NYRA’s ban of the trainer earlier this year, according to a court filing.

In a letter filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, NYRA’s attorneys argued that Baffert should not be allowed to file a new complaint in an ongoing challenge of the ban because the “proposed amendments would be futile, as a matter of law.” The letter said that the judge in the case, Carol Bagley Anon, had earlier settled the points raised by Baffert in his request to file the complaint.

A grant of Baffert’s motion would likely further delay the case from proceeding, more than five months after NYRA issued its first ban of Baffert after he acknowledged that his horse Medina Spirt tested positive for the regulated anti-inflammatory corticosteroid betamethasone after winning this year’s Kentucky Derby. The case has not yet been adjudicated.

The NYRA-Baffert case has already gone through several evolutions. Early this summer, Anon granted a preliminary injunction that kept NYRA from enforcing its first ban while Baffert appeals the underlying legal issues.

Then, in September, NYRA adopted protocols to hold internal hearings, and Baffert has been scheduled to appear before the hearing officer beginning on Jan. 24. Since then, Anon has partially upheld NYRA’s rights to proceed with the hearing, as a matter of law.

The letter filed by Baffert last week asking Anon to approve an amended complaint was based on the establishment of the new hearing protocols. In the letter, Baffert’s attorneys contended that the amended complaint was necessary because “any allegations related to the new rules and procedures were not currently part of the ongoing action and would be need to be asserted as new claims.”