Drew Cuoto

The opening months of 2019 were still fresh in California lawmakers' minds when they passed a bill that summer giving the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) emergency authority to suspend racing at a track without the hitherto required 10-day public notice period. The precipitating event, of course, was the spate of equine fatalities that had covered Santa Anita, and the racing industry in general, under a pall of public condemnation--the exact same kind of scrutiny Churchill Downs has faced these past few weeks, culminating with the announced switch of racing...

The legal threads connecting the rights of licensees to ply their trade and racetrack owners to police their grounds have been pulled tighter than a rip cord these past few years, thanks to a series of high-profile battles involving Hall of Famers Jerry Hollendorfer and Bob Baffert. These same threads hamstrung the years-long dispute between California's trainers and racetracks about what should be written into the race-meet agreement about fair procedures for trainers facing potential banishment from a facility. It all boils down to this: How best to balance the...

In a hearing conducted Friday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer--barred from The Stronach Group (TSG)-owned facilities since June of 2019 due to a number of equine fatalities in his care amid the well-publicized Santa Anita welfare crisis--was not granted a prohibitory injunction to be able to enter and race horses under his name at Santa Anita for the upcoming 2021-2022 winter/spring meet. According to Hollendorfer's attorney, Drew Couto, "the judge declined the motion saying that although it asked for a prohibitory injunction, in the court's...