A U.S. District Court judge has ruled against NASCAR’s request to sanction a former attorney for suspended driver Jeremy Mayfield for an affidavit that misrepresented the background of a Texas drug-testing laboratory operator. Judge Graham Mullen in Charlotte also denied NASCAR’s request for Mayfield to pay for the sanctioning body’s defense against assertions tied to the affidavit. The affidavit was from Harvey MacFenerstein, who has said there were mistakes in his credentials and is no longer being used by the Mayfield legal team. In his ruling Tuesday on the circumstance surrounding the submission of that affidavit, Judge Mullen said [former Mayfield attorney John] Buric probed MacFenerstein’s qualifications, had reason to believe the qualifications MacFenerstein claimed to have were correct and his editorial oversight on whether MacFenerstein was a medical review officer was likely inadvertent and not serious enough for sanctions. The decision Tuesday does not impact the case schedule.(SceneDaily)(10-7-2009)
