NEW YORK – Closing arguments were a late scratch Monday in the trial of veterinarian and animal-products salesman Seth Fishman being held in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil met the lawyers for both sides in her chambers and then called the jury into the courtroom and sent them home. She told the jurors to return to court Tuesday. “There has developed legal issues that need to be dealt with,” Vyskocil told the jury of eight women and four men. But Fishman’s absence in court only deepened the mystery. His wife, Hanna, was in the courtroom in the morning and at one point appeared to be visibly upset. Fishman is free on $100,000 bond and had appeared in court for each of the trial’s previous eight sessions. The only other clue as to what was happening came when Fishman attorney Maurice Sercarz appeared in the courtroom after the jury had been dismissed and told the judge that Fishman was on his way to the hospital. "We are in open court," Vyskocil said to Sercarz in admonishment. Sercarz and his co-counsel Marc Fernich and prosecutors declined further comment. :: For the first time ever, our premium past performances are free! Get free Formulator now! Lawyers showed up in the afternoon for another conference in the judge’s chambers. The day ended with Vyskocil never returning to the bench. The closing arguments were set to begin after the prosecution rested its case and the defense rested without calling a single witness, including Fishman. The jury has heard five days of testimony from 11 government witnesses. Fishman, 50, is on trial for conspiring to violate medication adulteration and misbranding laws. Prosecutors have said he supplied horse trainers with illegal performance-enhancing drugs designed to evade testing by racing regulators in various states, including Florida, New York, and Kentucky. Sercarz says the actions his client has been accused of were carried out to protect the health and welfare of horses in keeping with his oath as a licensed veterinarian. Prosecutors allege that Fishman was part of a sweeping conspiracy to dope racehorses that included top Thoroughbred trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis. The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced the charges in March 2020. Servis is awaiting trial, and Navarro has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty. Servis’s name hasn’t come up in testimony, but Navarro’s name has come up numerous times. Prosecutors said Navarro paid Fishman tens of thousands of dollars for performance-enhancing drugs. The jury saw a video of Navarro’s X Y Jet winning a $2.5 million race in Dubai in 2019. In a text seen by the jury, Navarro thanked Fishman for his help after the race. During the trial, prosecutors also played an FBI wiretap in which Navarro was recorded speaking to Fishman. Another prominent name that emerged in court in one of the wiretaps was that of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the owner of the internationally successful Godolphin racing stable. The wiretap was played last Thursday, when Adrienne Hall, a Florida Standardbred trainer, was testifying. On the wiretap, Fishman tells Hall that the sheikh’s hospital in Dubai, known as Dubai Equine, spent $2 million “devising” a “program” for Thoroughbred horses, though it is not clear what Fishman is referencing, and no details about the elements of the “program” were provided by Fishman or the prosecution. Fishman has claimed that he has clients in Dubai for his products and services. "This is a program that Dubai Equine spent probably $2 million devising for their Thoroughbreds, you know?” Fishman tells Hall. “It is part of a program that uh, you know, [unintelligible] there's other stuff too. This is what they do for all their horses and overall, they are very happy. Shiekh (sic) Mohammed Maktum (sic) said the best three years, you know, in the 30 years he has been racing and they are very happy. So, I'm sharing stuff with you. But then again that's for Thoroughbreds, so we just have to tweak something out because some of the stuff I design for Standardbreds, they don't work." Hall testified Thursday that Fishman provided her with a product marketed as a blood-building drug and that she administered the product to a horse that won a low-level claiming racing. Hall agreed to testify in exchange for a non-prosecution agreement. A transcript of the wiretap obtained Monday begins with Fishman telling Hall that his own “program” is “not instantaneous.” Again, the transcript does not include any specific references to what the program entails. Fishman told Hall that it takes “a few weeks” before Hall should “start seeing they feel a little different and a little more alive.” A tally shows the wiretap was one of 55 recordings the jury heard in the case. Almost all of them involved Fishman. The Thoroughbred industry’s leading publications are working together to cover this key trial.