Racing: Cropp's drug case in Supreme Court

Top jockey Lisa Cropp's legal battle over a positive methamphetamine test is being played out in the highest court in the land today.

Cropp tested positive for methamphetamine in a urine sample taken in a random test at a race meeting in Hamilton on May 7, 2005. She has been fighting a legal battle ever since.

A hearing by racing's Judicial Control Authority (JCA) was interrupted in February last year after her lawyers sought a judicial review through the court system to argue that the drug test was unlawful.

Justice Pamela Andrews dismissed Cropp's case against the judicial committee in the High Court and her decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal on September 27.

In the Supreme Court at Wellington today, Cropp's lawyer Alan Ivory argued that random drug tests breached a fundamental right to bodily privacy and integrity.

He said there was no power in the Racing Act to make rules which breached that right.

The hearing is continuing.

- NZPA