The lawyer for the man who alleges that Ahmed Zayat has failed to pay a $2 million gambling debt filed a $10 million libel suit on Monday against Zayat, the owner of American Pharoah.
Joseph Bainton, the lawyer for Howard Rubinsky, said Zayat maliciously defamed him when he told reporters that the original lawsuit was “extortion, a fraud and blackmail.”
In the complaint, Bainton references articles in The Daily News, The Associated Press and outlets as far away as The Daily Mail in London, where Zayat had characterized the Rubinsky’s suit as complete “fiction.” Bainton also references an Observer.