Hagyard, vets seek dismissal of lawsuit over sales radiographs

The defendants in a class-action lawsuit accusing Hagyard Equine Medical Institute and several of its veterinary partners of falsifying dates on sales radiographs have asked the court to dismiss the suit, according to court records.

The four veterinarians named in the suit and Hagyard filed the motions to dismiss earlier this week, in advance of a pre-trial hearing scheduled for March 8. The motions to dismiss state that some radiographs were indeed misdated, but that the sole named plaintiff in the suit, the Illinois-based trainer Tom Swearingen, had not provided evidence that he was misled into purchasing a horse due to the falsified dates.

The suit, filed by attorney Mason Miller, relied in large part on a settlement reached last year in which several Hagyard veterinarians testified before the Kentucky Board of Veterinary Examiners that they had altered dates on some radiographs provided to Keeneland for its horse auctions over a 10-year period. The veterinarians paid fines for the alterations.

The suit alleged that the alterations to the dates the radiographs were taken had “allowed billions of dollars of horses to be sold that otherwise would not have qualified for to be sold.” Keeneland requires consignors of horses to provide a set of radiographs of horses entered in the sale for viewing by buyers, with the set required to be taken within 21 days for its September yearling sale and within 15 days of all other sales.

While the motions to dismiss did include acknowledgements that some dates had been falsified, consistent with the settlement reached with the veterinary board, the motions claim that the dates were changed by “usually no more than one or two days” because of the difficulties faced by veterinarians in radiographing large numbers of horses within the Keeneland-set timeframe, and not to “deceive any prospective buyer.” Keeneland’s September and November sales typically include thousands of horses in their catalogs.

The motions to dismiss were filed by Hagyard and the veterinarians Michael Hore, Robert Hunt, Dwayne Rodgerson, and Michael Spirito, who were all named as defendants.