Report: Calif. board agrees to pay Ruis to settle Justify dispute

Triple Crown champion Justify’s disqualification as the winner of the 2018 Santa Anita Derby reportedly turned into a formal order this week to pay owner-trainer Mick Ruis a total of $700,000, punctuating a four-year dispute over a failed drug test that was covered up by the California Horse Racing Board.

BloodHorse legal correspondent Dick Downey was first to report the CHRB agreed to make a $300,000 payment to settle a lawsuit brought by Ruis. The board also ordered purse money from the $1 million race to be redistributed. That means an additional $400,000 would go to Ruis, the difference between $600,000 for winning and $200,000 for the runner-up. Ruis’s colt Bolt d’Oro crossed the finish line second behind Justify in the Grade 1 race.

Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled Dec. 1 in favor of Ruis on a motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court. He ordered CHRB stewards to disqualify Justify, who tested positive for scopolamine after the Santa Anita Derby. The test did not come to light until a report by Joe Drape was published in The New York Times nearly 1 1/2 years later.

Justify’s trainer Bob Baffert said the scopolamine came from feed contaminated with jimsonweed. The CHRB agreed, saying it investigated and reportedly found other horses also ate the feed. In a closed-door meeting it threw out the results of the test.

Ruis and his lawyers said the CHRB should not have done that without a hearing. The board eventually let Ruis make his case. Afterward the CHRB said it would not change its mind. Ruis then filed his suit.

If not for his top-two finish in the Santa Anita Derby, Justify would not have made it to the Kentucky Derby in what turned into a Triple Crown campaign. The day after Beckloff’s ruling in December, Churchill Downs Inc. spokesperson Tonya Abeln said, “We don’t plan to revisit history in terms of the Kentucky Derby winner.”

Downey’s BloodHorse report said China Horse Club, Head of Plains, Starlight Racing and WinStar may have the right to appeal the CHRB order to pay back the $600,000 winner’s purse, because the agreement filed in Los Angeles Superior Court was not binding. A decision to pay or fight must be made within the next month.