By T. D. Thornton
Hawthorne Race Course and three of the track's key racing executives on Nov. 18 asked a federal judge to dismiss the main claims in a lawsuit brought by a former association veterinarian who recently worked the Chicago-area track's Thoroughbred meets. In a Sept. 12, 2024, legal complaint, Dr. Christine Tuma had alleged that her efforts to scratch over 80 lame or injured Thoroughbreds during 2022-23 were met with a purported conspiracy among track employees, other veterinarians, and state regulators to overturn her actions so unsound horses could be entered to fill short-field races.
Tuma also claimed in United States District Court (Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division) that when she reported this alleged conspiracy to state and federal regulators, she was fired “in retaliation for blowing the whistle on the illegal activities.”
Tuma's is using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to try and collect damages. RICO is a sweeping 1970 federal statute initially designed to combat the Mafia. But RICO has long since lost its “organized crime” stigma, evolving over the decades into a civil litigation component more often asserted by purported victims of white-collar crime.
Tuma's lawsuit stated that because of the alleged conspiracy, she has “suffered loss of income, benefits, career opportunities, humiliation, and emotional distress.” She is seeking judgment against the defendants “for actual damages, compensatory damages, punitive damages, treble damages, attorney's fees and costs, and any other relief deemed proper by this Court.”
Hawthorne management had denied the allegations to TDN when the litigation was first initiated two months ago. On Monday, the track, plus employees Jim Miller (director of racing), John Walsh (assistant general manager) and Dave White (racing secretary), made their first legal written response to the accusations.
“This is an employment dispute between an employer and one of its former employees,” stated a memorandum of law filed by those defendants along with their request to dismiss the RICO claims.
“Plaintiff, a former veterinarian who was laid off in July of 2023 as part of a companywide reduction, contends that she 'was terminated in retaliation for her protected activities of disclosing the activities of the “Enterprise” and to ensure that Dr. Tuma could not make any further disclosures regarding the scheme to the federal regulators,'” the Hawthorne defendants' filing continued.
“Recognizing that her termination, a single, discrete event, could never evidence the type of continuous and ongoing criminal activity necessary to allege a RICO claim, Plaintiff tries to shoehorn her termination into the alleged gambling scheme, which she claims has been ongoing since March of 2022. This argument fails for many reasons,” the Hawthorne defendants' filing stated.
“First, Plaintiff lacks RICO standing, because the injury she alleges was not directly caused by the claimed RICO violation,” the Hawthorne defendants' filing stated.
“Second, even if Plaintiff could meet this standard, which she cannot, her allegations fall well short of alleging conduct of an enterprise or a pattern of racketing,” the Hawthorne defendants stated.
“Third, Plaintiff has failed to allege sufficient allegations that a conspiracy exists between the Defendants and that the Defendants knowingly agreed to perform services which facilitated the activities of the enterprise,” the Hawthorne defendants stated.
Also named in the lawsuit as defendants are the Illinois Racing Board (IRB); Dawn Folker-Calderon, the IRB's chief state vet; two state stewards, Thomas Kelley and John Eddy, plus Beth Beuchler, a vet employed by Hawthorne. The IRB and its employees filed notice Nov. 15 indicating an intent to seek dismissal. Beuchler was not among the Hawthorne-employed defendants that made the Monday filings along with the track itself; she will be represented by separate counsel.
The former association vet's lawsuit stated that, “It was during the fall meeting in 2022 that Dr. Tuma uncovered the full extent of the illegal running of sick and lame horses. On or around the same time, Dr. Tuma uncovered and began investigating alterations of the medical records of these horses.”
Tuma's complaint stated that, “The entry of these horses into regulated Illinois races was not only a means for the RICO Defendants to induce wagers on horses that were not legally qualified to run, but in numerous instances, the certification of an additional horse in a race allowed the Enterprise to run races that did not meet the legally mandated minimum number of entries required to run a wagered race under Illinois law.”
Over the course of 48 pages, Tuma's complaint detailed how her assessments of horses as “scratch lame” had allegedly been tampered with by Calderon and Beuchler and changed to “racing sound,” the indication that the horse was fit to run, or to the less-severe “scratch sick” designation that is supposed to indicate temporary illness.
When Tuma expressed her concerns about the scratch process to Calderon, she was allegedly told, “This is how it's always done.”
Tuma's lawsuit stated that owners and trainers began to complain about her high number of scratch assessments, including one horseman who allegedly “caused a horse to lurch menacingly at her, threatening grave bodily harm.” Another time, the suit contended, a groom “physically battered her.”
The suit stated that when Tuma reported these alleged incidents of abuse to track officials and the stewards, “only a nominal fine was levied against the perpetrators.”
When Tuma began making a series of complaints to the stewards about the “misclassification of horses as sick from lame,” she was informed by Calderon “that she had been stripped of her authority to scratch horses,” and that a new protocol requiring Beuchler to check her assessments would be in place, the suit stated.
On March 20, 2023, Tuma's suit stated that she “delivered a comprehensive whistleblower letter” to the IRB and the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA).
The suit continued: “On or around the date Dr. Tuma submitted her comprehensive complaint to the IRB, Miller, who had theretofore never called Dr. Tuma directly on her cell phone, called her a minimum of six times to intimidate her about her lame scratches and to ensure that the maximum number of horses were run.”
Some 3 1/2 months later, the suit stated, just two days before HISA personnel were scheduled to visit Hawthorne for an inspection, “Dr. Tuma met with Walsh via Zoom on July 11, 2023, and was informed that she had been terminated based on the pretext that her termination was a cost-cutting measure.”
In their Monday response, the Hawthorne filing stated that if Tuma's RICO claims fail as the defendants allege they should, then the rest of the lawsuit should also legally unravel.
That's because, the Hawthorne defendants stated, “the Court must also dismiss Plaintiff's Illinois civil conspiracy claim and Count VIII.”
And if “Plaintiff's federal claims are dismissed, the Court should decline to exercise jurisdiction over the state law claims against the Hawthorne Defendants,” the Hawthorne filing stated.
The Hawthorne defendants stated that despite the accusations of illegality outlined in Tuma's complaint, she never documented any attempts to contact law enforcement agencies to report the alleged criminal activity.
“Rather, Plaintiff asserts that she made complaints to HISA and the IRB,” the Hawthorne defendants stated. “Neither HISA nor IRB are law enforcement agencies. As a result, Plaintiff has failed to allege any complaint or claim that was made to a law enforcement officer as a required element to maintain a RICO claim.”
The Hawthorne defendants further argued that Tuma lacks RICO standing because “she was not a target or a victim” of the alleged conspiracy.
“According to Plaintiff's own allegations, the only persons who were the alleged victims of the scheme are the individuals who placed the wager on a particular horse and the owners of the injured horses,” the Hawthorne defendants' filing stated.
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