NYRA ban

A federal judge has ordered that the New York Racing Association (NYRA) must pay trainer Bob Baffert $109,124 in legal expenses. Those fees and costs were incurred in the early stages of the trainer's civil rights lawsuit against NYRA, and the court has determined that legal precedents qualified him as the "prevailing party" five months ago when he obtained a preliminary injunction to overcome NYRA's banishment of him from Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct. That figure represents only a partial award. The Hall-of-Fame trainer had been seeking $162,086. NYRA had argued...

BROOKLYN--After an-hour-and-forty minute hearing Monday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in which lawyers representing Bob Baffert argued for a preliminary injunction that would allow the trainer to once again race at the New York Racing Association tracks, Judge Carol Bagley Amon did not render a decision and did not give a time frame for doing so. The hearing came on the heels of a May 17 announcement from NYRA in which the racing organization said Baffert had been temporarily suspended, which meant...