Fired vet files lawsuit alleging Hawthorne Race Course allowed horses deemed ineligible to race

The Chicago area’s longest operating horse racing track is being sued along with state regulators for allegedly allowing dozens of horses to race despite medical diagnoses from a now-terminated track veterinarian that they were physically unfit to run.

The federal lawsuit filed Thursday against Hawthorne Race Course, the Illinois Racing Board and others at the track and state agency comes from a former Hawthorne veterinarian, Christine Tuma, who alleges she was fired after reporting alleged misconduct at Hawthorne to state and federal agencies.

The newly filed case alleged potential race-fixing, multiple acts of racketeering and wire fraud, and a violation of Illinois law protecting whistleblowers from retaliatory job termination.

But Hawthorne vowed to fight the lawsuit and contended Tuma’s claims were false and defamatory, and the Illinois Racing Board said it had found no evidence to support her claims of misconduct.

Tuma alleged she was fired by the racetrack, located in the suburb of Stickney, in July 2023. That came after she made complaints to state and federal racing regulators that her efforts to sideline more than 80 physically ailing horses at Hawthorne were being overturned regularly by the track and the state Racing Board’s chief veterinarian, according to the lawsuit.

Over a two-year period, those horses were fraudulently certified as safe to race after Hawthorne and the Racing Board veterinarian to whom Tuma reported gave the animals clean bills of health, ostensibly to boost wagering on the track’s races, the lawsuit alleged.

“What happened here is a conspiracy by the owners and operators of Hawthorne Race Course, officials from the Illinois Racing Board and a host of others, who conspired to run horses that were lame and unfit to run in horse races in order to increase the betting pool,” Haskell Garfinkel, a Chicago attorney representing Tuma, told WBEZ in an interview.

Hawthorne disputes allegations

The racetrack vouched for its safety record and disputed Tuma’s allegations.

“Tuma’s lawsuit is false and misguided, and Hawthorne will vigorously contest it in court,” the track said. “ Tuma is using the legal system to settle professional disagreements with other, more experienced and accomplished veterinarians at the track and the Illinois Racing Board.

“These professionals have dedicated their careers at Hawthorne and the racing board to performing with the highest degree of professionalism,” the statement continued.

The Racing Board also disagreed with Tuma’s claims.

“The Illinois Racing Board takes all allegations of improper conduct, horse welfare and racetrack safety very seriously,” said Domenic DiCera, the agency’s executive director. “When we were made aware of some of these allegations in March 2023, we immediately looked into the matter and alerted federal horse racing authorities.

“We found no credible evidence to support any allegations of wrongdoing at the time, nor have federal authorities made us aware of any substantiated allegations,” he said.

Illinois law requires every horse to undergo a physical examination on the day of a race to establish their physical fitness to compete. And in Tuma, Hawthorne had a veterinarian who had been licensed by the state since 2007 with no record of disciplinary action from Springfield, state licensing records show.

The lawsuit said at least 21 horses were euthanized or died at Hawthorne “from racing or racing related activities during 2022 and 2023."

One allegedly ailing horse cited in the lawsuit was named Dastardly Deeds.

Tuma assessed the horse as lame based on its gait, with a high likelihood of neurological deficits, and concluded it should not race. But the lawsuit said her diagnosis was overturned by the state’s chief veterinarian, Dawn Folker-Calderon, and the horse ran anyway in a July 6, 2023 race.

The lawsuit alleged that Folker-Calderon then notified Hawthorne’s director of racing, Jim Miller, about Tuma’s “interference” regarding both that particular horse and her May 2023 complaint to the Racing Board about the pattern of having her medical diagnoses surrounding unfit horses reversed. Folker-Calderon and Miller are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

That alleged interaction between the Racing Board veterinarian and the Hawthorne executive was a violation of state ethics and government misconduct laws, the lawsuit alleged, and came days before the track moved to end Tuma’s employment, allegedly as a “cost-cutting measure” — a cause Hawthorne itself acknowledged in its statement Thursday.

“Unfortunately, in 2023, economic conditions and economic conditions alone forced Hawthorne to lay off a number of employees, including Tuma, a part-time track veterinarian who had only been hired three years earlier,” the track said.

Miller did not respond to a WBEZ request for comment. The Racing Board also did not respond to a request to make Folker-Calderon available to answer questions.

Claims of medically disqualified horses allowed to compete

Tuma’s termination also came less than a week before a scheduled visit to Hawthorne by federal racing regulators with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to certify the track was meeting new national animal welfare standards that are part of the agency’s accreditation process.

Months earlier, Tuma had described to that federal agency details of an alleged ongoing scheme at Hawthorne that involved the tampering with official veterinary records about horses’ fitness to race. Those suspect records were being submitted to state and federal racing regulators, the lawsuit said.

Under Illinois law, the lawsuit said, a minimum of six horses is typically required in order for wagering to be permitted on a race. Numerous times, the act of reinstating a horse’s eligibility after it had been medically disqualified by Tuma allowed races and wagering to proceed, the lawsuit alleged, resulting in revenues for the defendants they otherwise would not have collected.

Allowing those horses to compete not only enabled the `“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,” the lawsuit said.

Tuma's complaints to federal and state regulators included allegations that the “ defendants may have used this information themselves or via others to place illegal wagers or fix races,” the lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit did not cite any specific instances in which races at Hawthorne may have been fixed.

The federal racing agency, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, declined comment Thursday about the lawsuit or whether it had investigated Tuma’s claims.

Hawthorne is one of two operating racetracks in Illinois in a once-dominant industry.
But that industry is a shell of itself.

In 2000, total wagering on horse racing exceeded $1.1 billion, with Hawthorne accounting for nearly $238 million of that amount. But by 2023, state records show, statewide betting on horse racing had fallen to $490.3 million with $148.3 million of that total for races run at Hawthorne.

Hawthorne had expected to benefit from a 2019 gambling package in Springfield that allowed for creation of racinos — gambling venues that incorporated traditional casino gambling at racetracks.

Garfinkel said the allegations spelled out in his client’s lawsuit against Hawthorne merit attention from Gov. JB Pritzker, whose administration oversees activities of the Illinois Racing Board. The governor also appoints the board’s members.

“Governor Pritzker really needs to be asking some hard questions about why it is that legislation continues to be enacted in Springfield to benefit the special interests in Illinois horse racing in an industry that basically doesn't exist anymore, that the public doesn’t want to exist anymore, and that is a holdover of the worst types of animal cruelty that we’ve seen,” Garfinkel said. “This is just a relic.”

The governor’s office did not have an immediate response to the lawsuit.

Dave McKinney covers Illinois government and politics for WBEZ. He also is the former long-time Springfield bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times.