Front-Runner

It takes more than horse sense to practice equine law. W. Craig Robertson III’s cases involve everything from the land under the horses’ hooves to the jockeys on their backs—and the owners, vets and trainers
in between.      

It’s high-stakes, high-tech, and very, very tradition-bound. The racehorses at the center of it all are elite athletes, exquisitely bred and painstakingly prepared. Their training alone can run into the millions
of dollars.

Yet deals are regularly done on a handshake, with no paper backing up the terms. Because that’s the way it’s always been done.

“People in the horse business are loathe to change their ways,” Robertson says. “So if you own a horse and you want to hire whomever, Bob Baffert or Todd Pletcher, or any of the big horse trainers, there’s no written contract that spells out the services they’re going to provide or what you’re going to pay.”

He adds, with more than a hint of understatement, “That can create problems in the end, because people then have different recollections of what was said or what was agreed to.”

At the same time, those time-honored customs exist in a world of evolving regulations and advancing science, including the intricacies of laboratory testing for minuscule traces of drugs that are legal at one level but prohibited a hair above. 

A given day might find Robertson trying to convince a jury of the binding details of an oral agreement built on nothing more than a nod and a handshake, or debating the validity of the science on which a potentially career-stunting ruling relies.

“Craig is a very diligent lawyer,” says fellow equine attorney Joel Turner, with whom Robertson teamed up on a protracted case against the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. “He knows the thoroughbred racing and breeding business well, and he zealously represents his clients, gets good outcomes. I’ve referred business to him. There’s no greater compliment for a lawyer than to have other lawyers you respect refer business to you.”

A Lexington native, Robertson grew up around horses. His father, a pediatric neurologist, bred an occasional mare on the family’s 12-acre farm. Robertson lights up as he recalls outings to a nearby track.

Still, when he headed off to the University of Kentucky, horses weren’t part of the plan. He majored in psychology, then continued into law there because “school seemed like a fun thing to me,” he says. “I consider myself very fortunate because that’s literally how
I decided to go to law school.”

After graduation in 1993, he started as a commercial litigator at Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs in Lexington and never left. He’s now partner-in-charge of the Lexington office and head of the firm’s equine and gaming area.

 His first horse-related case came about five years into his career, when he represented a vet hired by clients to identify young horses that would grow up to be contenders.

 “He had this oral agreement with an owner,” Robertson says: “‘If I find you a horse that goes on and does achieve a certain success at the racetrack, you pay me these bonuses associated with it. OK?’ ‘OK.’”

When one did, the owner didn’t.

The jury sided with the vet.

From there, his involvement with horses in and out of the courtroom grew, with cases involving some of the top trainers in horse racing. He represented seven-time Kentucky Derby winner Bob Baffert in one of the racing world’s best-known controversies.

Medina Spirit, a colt Baffert trained, won the 2021 Derby but was disqualified after a post-race test detected betamethasone in the horse’s system. The anti-inflammatory is legal in Kentucky, but banned on race day.

As a result, Medina Spirit was stripped of the title, and Churchill Downs suspended Baffert from racing for a total of three years. Baffert dropped his appeal last January.

His praise for Robertson continues.

“He’s very compassionate,” Baffert says. “He worries about his clients. He understands our pain.”

Robertson says his dedication comes from the heart.

“Part of my passion is not just for my clients, but it’s also for the sport that I love,” he says. “I think 99.9 % of the people in the sport are trying to do the right thing and comply with the rules. But sometimes mistakes happen, whether it’s from a veterinarian, or a horse doesn’t metabolize a medication as fast as we thought that they would, and the sport gets labeled when the headlines are about doping
and all that. Then my fear and concern is that the general public thinks that it’s a dirty sport.”

Robertson is more than a spectator of horse racing. His office is “littered,” as he puts it, with photos of horses he has co-owned and races they’ve won.

There’s Cairo Prince, who won the Holy Bull Stakes. And the star of them all, Soldat, who made it to the pinnacle of horse racing, the Kentucky Derby.

“I rented a bus for all my friends and family,” he says, “because I was like, ‘This is never gonna happen again, but we’re gonna live it up and we’re gonna enjoy every moment.

“We all drove up to Churchill Downs, had a great time, came back, and I always say, ‘It was the best 11th-place finish of any horse that I’ve ever had.’”