Attorneys for Meadowlands Racetrack owner, Jeff Gural, have asked for the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by eight horse racing owners banned from the track for three years. The suit claims Gural singled the eight out unfairly.
Gural also kept the men from racing at Gural’s two upstate tracks, Tioga Downs, and Vernon Downs, according to NJ Online Gambling.
“Plaintiffs’ theory is that the tracks, each as an independent entity, conspired with Gural to exclude other horse owners, even though the tracks obtained no economic benefit from doing so, as the tracks do not own horses,” Gural’s attorneys wrote.
In early March, Gural issued a statement on behalf of his three tracks that anyone who stabled non-racing horses with trainer Rene Allard would have their racehorses excluded from racing at the three tracks for a minimum of three years.
The feds indicted Allard last year as part of a probe into the industry, and he and fellow defendants were alleged to be involved in a scheme to “manufacture, distribute, and receive adulterated and misbranded (performing-enhancing drugs) and to secretly administer those PEDs to racehorses.”
An attorney for Allard has accused Gural of focusing on his client since 2013 when he was banned for suspicion of horse doping.
Kapildeo Singh, Lawrence Dumain, Ira Wallach, Brian Wallach, Yves Sarrazin, Erlin Hill, Bruce Soulsby, and Alan Weisenberg are the plaintiffs. Their lawyers claim the defendants have smeared their clients because of Allard’s misdeeds.
Gural’s attorneys have a far different take. “Plaintiffs theorize that defendants excluded plaintiffs’ horses from defendants’ tracks, thus steering those horses to competitor racetracks,” they wrote in their filing. “There is no allegation that the tracks’ alleged ‘boycott’ of certain horses gives defendants any competitive advantage or causes harm to any competitor at their level of the market.
“Instead, the complaint is premised on a theory that the tracks acted in the absence of any economic motivation to cause injury.”
