Churchill Downs Returns Fire at Baffert Recusal Motion

Churchill Downs has filed a fiery response to a motion by Bob Baffert asking that the federal judge in Louisville disqualify herself from overseeing the case the Hall of Fame trainer filed against the company.

The filing was made Feb. 13, three days after Baffert attorney Clark Brewster filed the recusal motion, which in turn was filed a week after a hearing on Baffert's motion to enjoin CDI from barring his horses from their tracks and two days after Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings chastised Brewster for claiming she had a back-door conversation with opposing counsel about how the hearing was being handled.

 Baffert Motion Asks Judge to Recuse from CDI Case

"Bob Baffert and his attorney Clark Brewster continue to launch brazen and baseless attacks on the integrity of this Court," attorney Orin Snyder wrote. "Their latest salvo... is a bad-faith tactical gambit to threaten and intimidate the Court, and to sully the Court's image in the press, by enabling them to spin a potential loss as the product of a corrupt tribunal."

Describing Baffert's recusal motion as both untimely and frivolous and "filled with falsehoods and filed in bad faith," Snyder specified that the motion is not accompanied by a certificate stating it was filed in good faith as required by statute, that it was filed far too late; and that a connection between the work done by the judge's husband, Patrick Jennings, as a legislative agent for The Jockey Club and the case Baffert brought against CDI "does not come remotely close to requiring recusal."

"They (Brewster and Baffert) concluded that the hearing had not gone well for them and believed that moving to disqualify would... either scare the Court into recusing... or intimidate the Court into granting a preliminary injunction to prove that it was not biased... (or) advance their public relations goals... to portray a potential loss as the product of a financially-compromised judge," Snyder wrote.

According to a federal statute under which the recusal motion was brought, the supporting affidavit, which in this case was signed by Brewster, must be "timely and sufficient."

CDI argues the motion is well short of being timely, being primarily based on the employment of the judge's husband as a lobbyist for The Jockey Club, which was a matter of public record about nine months ago. Brewster, in his affidavit, said he discovered the connection on Feb. 8, five days after the injunction hearing concluded, during an internet search.

As for the sufficiency of the motion, "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 in any way related to this dispute," Snyder wrote. "Just the opposite: representation of The Jockey Club is limited solely to legislation introduced during the 2022 legislative session and is in no way related to any matter currently pending before a court."

Although, according to Snyder, the recusal motion strives to portray a biased atmosphere in Jennings' court during the injunction hearing, this "is rebutted not just by the transcript of proceedings, but by his own client, who proclaimed to the media on the courthouse steps immediately after the hearing that 'today was great because I finally got to tell my story in a non-bias(ed) atmosphere.'"

Snyder also recounted that before the hearing, the parties agreed, with the blessing of the court, each side would have two hours to present their cases. After Brewster and his co-counsel expended their entire two hours making an opening statement, Jennings granted an expansion of the hearing to about 6 1/2 hours. Brewster told Jennings, according to Snyder, "you've been great at giving us time. I appreciate it, Judge. I really do."