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.