The owners and the breeders of a horse who finished second in a November allowance race at Churchill Downs have sued the horse’s jockey, alleging breach of contract due to the rider easing up on the horse in late stretch.
Luan Machado is being sued for lost purse funds and breeders’ awards, plus “unliquidated damages” and “consequential damages” by Gray V Train Racing, the partnership that owns the horse, a ridgling named Hold My Bourbon, and Westbrook Farm, which bred the horse. The Nov. 28 race had a total purse of $130,644, with $72,960 to the winner and $25,400 to the second-place finisher.
Hold My Bourbon lost by a neck.
Machado was subsequently fined $1,000 by the Churchill stewards and given a four-day suspension for failing to ride his mount to the finish. According to the lawsuit, Machado “himself has admitted to the plaintiffs that he was negligent in pulling up early in the race without cause.”
The suit, which was filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court, located in Louisville, was first reported by The Paulick Report.
The case is highly unusual, in that owners almost always accept the consequences of a bad ride on a horse without resorting to litigation. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could open up riders to direct liability for their performances, not only for lost purse money, but also for damages to a horse’s breeding value.
Andre Regard, the attorney representing the owner and breeder, said that the case has some precedent from a lawsuit in the early 1900s in which a judge ruled that an owner and jockey have a “privity of a contract that requires the jockey to ride to the best of his ability throughout the race.”
“The jockey has the requirement based on that case to do everything required to win the race,” Regard said.
In response to a request for comment, The Jockeys’ Guild, a trade organization for riders in North America, said in a statement that the claims in the lawsuit are “utterly baseless,” and said the Guild “stands ready to vigorously assist” Machado in his defense.
“The Kentucky legislature has entrusted the stewards of the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation with responsibility for determining if there has been a violation of the racing rules,” the statement said. “There is absolutely no basis for private parties to try to undermine the stewards’ statutorily entrusted decision by supplanting it with their own judgment as to what the appropriate penalty should be.”
Machado was fined two weeks earlier by the stewards at Keeneland for a similar infraction and fined $2,500.
Regard said that the adjudications of the two rides by the Kentucky stewards proved that Machado had not ridden to the best of his ability, but he said that it would not be necessary to have a ruling in order to pursue a lawsuit alleging breach of contract.
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