Lawsuit: Horse trainer Dale Romans breached contract to race his brother's horses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Louisville-based thoroughbred trainer Dale Romans failed to abide by an agreement with his brother to race and sell horses, according to a lawsuit filed this week.

Jerry L. Romans Jr. alleges that Dale Romans “began to take actions detrimental” to his business interests following an altercation at Churchill Downs in 2011. At that time, Jerry Romans was sending horses to his brother Dale to train.

Among other things, Jerry Romans accuses his brother of refusing to enter two horses in races while continuing to bill for training services; buying horses in Jerry Romans’ name without his approval; and entering a horse owned by Jerry Romans in an auction without his brother's permission.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Jefferson Circuit Court, is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.

Dale Romans has yet to file a response to the lawsuit. He declined to comment when reached by phone on Thursday.

Based at Churchill Downs, Dale Romans has trained horses for nearly three decades and received the 2012 Eclipse Award as the sport’s outstanding trainer. His father, the late Jerry Romans, also trained at Churchill.

Dale Romans has won four Breeders’ Cup races and the 2011 Preakness Stakes with Shackleford. One of his trainees, Keen Ice, beat Triple Crown winner American Pharoah In last summer’s Travers Stakes.

Jerry Romans Jr., who lives in North Carolina, has owned horses such as Sassy Image, who won the 2011 Humana Distaff at Churchill Downs and other stakes races.

The lawsuit claims that Jerry Romans and his brother had an agreement from 2004 to 2012 that allowed Dale Romans to train horses owned by Jerry Romans, who eventually sold them. Their business arrangement began to sour in 2011, when Dale Romans and his companion, Tammy Fox, threatened Jerry Romans in the Churchill clubhouse on Kentucky Oaks Day, according to the lawsuit.

“This was humiliating that in public on such an important race day in front of a crowd of friends and associates that they would physically threaten violence, personal harm and property damage,” the suit says.

The following year, Jerry Romans alleges, Dale Romans stopped training two of his brother’s horses and “refused to enter them into any races,” even though both were in the prime of their racing career and had “revenue-generating talent.”

Also in 2012, Jerry Romans claims that he wasn’t told by his brother that Sassy Image was up for sale at a Fasig-Tipton auction in Lexington. The mare had been entered in the sale the previous year, but she didn’t reach her minimum sale price of $1.5 million.

Jerry Romans alleges in the suit that he received a text message from an employee of Dale Romans “[l]iterally minutes” before the start of the 2012 auction letting him know that Sassy Image had been entered with a minimum, or “reserve,” price of $600,000.

The text message was the first notice Jerry Romans got that Sassy Image was for sale – and with a reserve price that was “below-market value,” according to the lawsuit. The horse sold for $660,000.

Jerry Romans claims Dale Romans “fraudulently” omitted details about the sale of Sassy Image. He also alleges that Dale Romans committed identity theft by purchasing horses in his brother’s name, causing Jerry Romans to pay for a horse called Southern Dynasty.

Claims made in a lawsuit give only one side of a case.