A Central Park carriage driver hit with animal abuse charges after his exhausted, elderly horse collapsed last year on a sweltering Manhattan street and later died also ruined a fellow New York City carriageman’s business in the process, a new lawsuit alleges.
Viral video emerged in August 2022 of Ian McKeever flogging the 26-year-old standardbred, sprawled out in Midtown during rush hour, while shouting, “Get up! Get up! C’mon, get up!”
The horse, named Ryder, was saved by responding NYPD officers but was euthanized several months later. The footage prompted a renewed call for a ban on carriage horses in the city. In November, McKeever was charged with overdriving, torturing and injuring animals and failure to provide proper sustenance, a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail.
Now, carriage driver Aydin Kaya says his livelihood and “stellar” reputation were collateral damage in the ghastly incident, according to a $1.2 million lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast. Kaya claims McKeever, 54, had been surreptitiously using his license plate on the carriage involved, implicating him by association and destroying his career.
Reached by phone on Monday, McKeever said, “It’s absolutely bullshit.”
Adam Katz, Kaya’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that his client’s name was sullied by McKeever and that taking him to court is the only way to right that wrong.
A source with knowledge of the case said Kaya no longer works in the business because of what happened, and has become an Uber driver to make ends meet.
The issue traces back to June 27, 2019, when Kaya agreed to lease the plate from McKeever for two years, in a series of installments totalling $100,000, the lawsuit states. When the pandemic shut down the industry in early 2020, Kaya continued to make payments on the plate, even though he couldn’t work, according to the suit.
But once New York City began easing COVID restrictions in October 2020, and carriage horses returned to Central Park, McKeever “began illegally using the License Plate,” without Kaya’s permission, according to the suit. Kaya claims he found out and texted McKeever about it on Oct. 24, but got no response.
But McKeever told The Daily Beast that when COVID hit, Kaya left the stable and stopped making payments on the plate.
“When COVID was over, he hadn’t paid anything, so I just took back over leasing the [plate and] carriage,” McKeever said.
Two years later, on Aug. 10, 2022, the plate was affixed to McKeever’s carriage when Ryder passed out after a seven-and-a-half-hour shift, according to the suit.
“Ian McKeever sat idly by as Ryder lay on the hot New York City pavement, struggling to move,” the lawsuit goes on. “Several news articles subsequently reported on Ian McKeever’s treatment of Ryder and detailed the poor condition the horse was in at the time of the incident… Ryder passed away on October 17, 2022.”
This all happened “while Ian McKeever was illegally utilizing the License Plate connected to Plaintiff’s business,” the lawsuit states, citing an abysmal TripAdvisor review a customer left on Aug. 12, two days after Ryder’s collapse.
“Awful. Horses are abused. Carriage driver Ian McKeever is an animal abuser!” reads the one-star review’s subject line.
“Horrible!” it continues. “We visited NYC in April. Horses are emaciated, abused and some of them are obviously sick! It made my small daughter who is an animal lover cry! Now I come to find out that one of the horse carriage drivers lan McKeever is an animal abuser! … DO NOT SUPPORT THE CARRIAGE HORSE INDUSTRY IN NYC! IF YOU DO YOU SUPPORT THE ABUSE IF [sic] THESE HORSES!”
Kaya “expended a significant amount of money to get the dismal Trip Advisor review removed and he can no longer do any business with Viator and TripAdvisor, which are both considerably lucrative platforms for generating business,” according to the suit.
“It’s been very difficult,” the source close to the case told The Daily Beast. “A lot of it, believe it or not, is word of mouth. That’s been a big part of the problem—his website and brand and name are not looked upon very favorably [anymore].”
The lawsuit says McKeever never returned the plate, nor did he refunded any of his money for its use, and continues to “evad[e] his calls.”When McKeever became aware that Kaya was planning to sue, he “surreptitiously and fraudulently transferred the License Plate to his brother, Colm McKeever,” who is also a Central Park carriage driver, the suit alleges.
“As with Ian, Colm has a reputation for mistreating horses and has been investigated for fraudulently changing ages on paperwork related to the horses,” the lawsuit states. (Colm McKeever, who was Ryder’s legal owner, was fined $2,000 by New York City health authorities for lying about Ryder’s age on licensing documents.)
Once the transfer was complete, Colm then “fraudulently sold” the license plate to a former employee of Kaya, Abderrahim Benriala, who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Kaya is suing for breach of contract, tortious interference, fraudulent conveyance, and unjust enrichment, and is asking for a total of $1.2 million, plus costs and attorney’s fees, from Ian McKeever, Colm McKeever, and Benriala.The criminal abuse case against Ian McKeever is pending. Following his arrest, McKeever called the prosecution “politicized.”
