A Los Angeles county superior court judge has issued an order requiring the stewards in California to disqualify Justify from the 2018 Santa Anita Derby. The order, issued by Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff on Friday, was sought by Mick Ruis, who owned the second-place finisher in the race, Bolt d’Oro. It is the latest in a drawn-out legal saga that began when it became known 17 months after the race that a post-race positive for scopolamine by Justify had been thrown out by the California Horse Racing Board. Ruis had first filed a lawsuit in early 2020 seeking the disqualification after the board refused to conduct a formal hearing into his complaint. The CHRB and Ruis later reached a settlement requiring a formal hearing before the stewards, but the stewards then ruled that they were not required to disqualify the horse. That led Ruis back to the courtroom to petition for the disqualification. After an initial hearing earlier this year, Beckloff sent the case back to the stewards for an explanation of their legal reasoning for declining to disqualify the horse. Unsatisfied with the stewards’ response, Beckloff issued the order on Friday requiring the disqualification. :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. “Today’s decision supports the longstanding California Horse Racing Board rule that any horse racing with a prohibited substance in its system must be disqualified and the purse redistributed,” said Darrell Vienna, a lawyer for Ruis, in a joint statement issued with Carlo Fisco, another lawyer for Ruis. Mike Marten, a spokesman for the CHRB, declined to comment on the order, saying that the board was deliberating over its response. Justify, owned by a partnership that included China Horse Club, WinStar Farm, Starlight Racing, and Head of Plains Partners and trained by Bob Baffert, went on to win the Triple Crown and was retired before the end of his 3-year-old season. He has since become a leading sire. Bolt d’Oro has also gone on to a successful stallion career. In the Justify case, the CHRB said that it conducted an investigation that proved that the horse accidentally ingested scopolamine from a shipment of hay contaminated with jimsonweed, which contains scopolamine. At the conclusion of the investigation, the CHRB voted to dismiss the positive, though the action was never publicized until the New York Times published an article on the incident in late 2019. Ruis and his attorneys have argued that California rules require disqualification for any post-race positive of a Class 1, 2, or 3 drug. At the time of the positive, scopolamine was a Class 3 drug, but it was in the process of being reclassified by the CHRB to a Class 4 drug. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.