Drew Cuoto

Proposed HISA Rule Change: Emergency Power to Suspend Live Racing?

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...

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Private Property Rights Under HISA

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...

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Hollendorfer Denied Injunction to Race at Santa Anita This Winter

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...

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