Churchill Downs filed a harsh response to a Bob Baffert petition asking a federal judge in Louisville to disqualify the case the Hall of Fame coach filed against the company.
The filing was made on February 13, three days after Baffert’s attorney, Clark Brewster, filed an appeal, which was in turn filed a week after a hearing on Baffert’s request that the CDI ban his horses. he was off the track and two days after Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings chastised Brewster for alleging she had a backdoor talk with the opposing counsel about how to handle the hearing.
Baffert Motion Asks Judge to Withdraw CDI Case
“Bob Baffert and his attorney Clark Brewster continue to launch blatant and baseless attacks on the integrity of this Court,” wrote attorney Orin Snyder. “Their latest attack… is an ill-willed tactical move intended to intimidate and intimidate the Court, while also tarnishing the Court’s image in the press, by allowing them to fabricate a potential loss is the product of a corrupt court.”
Describing Baffert’s denial petition as untimely, frivolous, and “full of falsehoods and filed with malicious intent”, Snyder pointed out that the petition was not accompanied by a certificate that it was filed in good faith as required by law, that it was submitted too far. late; and that the connection between the work done by the judge’s husband, Patrick Jennings, as the legislative representative for The Jockey Club and the case that Baffert brought against CDI “wasn’t to the point of denial. distant.”
“They (Brewster and Baffert) concluded that the hearing did not go well for them and believe that moving to disqualification would… either force the Court to refuse… or threaten The court issues a preliminary order to prove that it is unbiased… (or) advances their public relations goals… to describe a potential loss that is the product of a judge financially harmed judge,” Snyder wrote.
Under a federal law under which a motion to deny is made, the affidavit of support, in this case signed by Brewster, must be “timely and complete.”
The CDI argued that the petition was untimely, based primarily on the judge’s hiring of her husband as a lobbyist for The Jockey Club, an issue that went public about nine months ago. Brewster, in his affidavit, said he discovered the connection on February 8, five days after the hearing on the injunction ended, during an internet search.
Regarding the adequacy of the petition, “The Jockey Club is not a party to this dispute and there is no allegation that the work Mr. Jennings performed for the Jockey Club is involved in the dispute. this in any way,” Snyder wrote. “To the contrary: representation by The Jockey Club is limited to legislation introduced in the 2022 legislative session and is completely unrelated to any matter currently pending in court.”
Although, according to Snyder, the motion to deny attempted to portray an atmosphere of bias in Jennings’ court during the injunction hearing, this “wasn’t just dismissed by the transcript of the proceedings.” chanting, but also by his own client, who stated to the media in court shortly after hearing that ‘it was great today because I finally got to tell my story in an atmosphere of (ed) unbiased.'”
Snyder also recounted that prior to the hearing, the parties agreed, with the permission of the court, to each have two hours to present their case. After Brewster and his co-advisor spent a full two hours delivering the opening remarks, Jennings authorized the extension of the hearing to approximately six-and-a-half hours. Brewster told Jennings, according to Snyder, “you’ve been great for giving us time. I appreciate that, Judge. I really agree.”
