Hill & Dale sues Rood & Riddle....

How common is it to send the mare to a equine hospital for foaling?
Sounds like R&R May have dropped the “after care” ball on this one.

Here’s the article.
https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/232259/hill-n-dale-sues-rood-riddle-over-death-of-foal

It is very common where I live --nothing on the caliber of the KY TBs, but here many, many people send their mares to stables set up for foaling --there are extra large stalls, 24/7 staff, cameras, equipment for monitoring the mare’s progress --we have a huge Amish population —foals are common (of course) but the ability of one family to work, get kids to school, and keep an eye on a pregnant mare is limited. So they send the mares to a foaling barn. I think within 5 miles of me there are two that I know of, might be 3. Two of them are run by vets, the other is a breeding stable that offers that service as well as stands some nice stallions.

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I side with HillnDale on this one. Carelessness on behalf of all involved. Hard to tell how they will justify the value of the foal though; that may be difficult to prove.

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I used to work at a foaling hospital run by a vet. It sounds to me asnif Rood & Riddle drpooed the ball on this.

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Sorry for the typos!

I think that’s a tough one. I wonder what the foal’s survivability would have been had they found the rib fractures earlier? The article quotes the complaint as “To a reasonable degree of medical probability, the foal’s rib fractures and/or hemorrhaging would have been discovered and death could have been prevented by medical and/or surgical management,” But I suspect that surgery on an already fragile newborn does not have a reasonable degree of medical probability for success.

I do think that “Intensive Care” does imply more that “vitals checked every four hours.”

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I know nothing about this case, so I am not speaking about the merits of either side.

But to answer your question, rib fractures are not uncommon in foals (big body, small space to get through on the way out). Usually they heal without incident if the foal is kept quiet and handled appropriately.

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Super common to send high risk pregnancy mares to a hospital for foaling. It’s basically SOP. It’s becoming common for hospitals to even offer healthy mare foaling services.

Otherwise, it’s hard to say if anyone was in the wrong without actually being there. Things aren’t always as black & white as they may appear.

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In KY not very common at all. The farms, esp one of Hill N Dale’s stature are set up to deal with just about anything that can go wrong with the average foaling. In my personal hands on experience things don’t go “wrong” very often. IMO foaling is one of easiest and non eventful things that horses do 95% of the time. When things go wrong with the other 5% they generally go very wrong. Even with vets on site.

This is a very valuable mare in foal to a top very expensive stallion. With a history of difficult foaling. Which is why she was sent to the clinic.

As LaurieB said cracked/fractured rid/s are not uncommon but they are not very common IME foaling out lots of mares. Personally never had one. Lots of other things but not that.

I have known the owner of Hill N Dale for over 30+ years. Knew his father and did a far amount of business with him. He was killed in a tragic accident a long time ago. His horse business was not his principle business in Canada. John and his brother Glen took over things. Glen stayed in Canada running the original Hill N Dale. John started the Ky division on a much smaller scale. They, John bought the present farm which was called North Ridge when the wealthy owner who built it left the business. BEAUTIFUL farm, couldn’t build it for what it was bought for. Not even close.

John is a tough cookie, shrewd no nonsense businessman. But not one to play the lawyer card at the drop of a hat.

That being said, we are only hearing one side so far. Unless settled out of court. There will be public record, reporting of both sides. Which will make for interesting, educational reading.

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It’s interesting they didn’t come to some sort of settlement/agreement before it got to the point of a lawsuit. Especially as it would seem there must have been conversation between the parties for the last two years since the foal died.

Suing is expensive and time-consuming, and the outcome is uncertain. No knowing why someone thought this was the way to go, without hearing directly from both sides.

In difficult situations, the facts known to the public are rarely complete. Maybe not even accurate. Not sure the public will ever know how it came to this.

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Suing is expensive and time-consuming, but you’re also talking about potentially millions of dollars of loss. That’s a pretty big claim to settle. It’s also hard to pick a number upon which to settle when so much can affect a horse’s value. Cyrus Alexander was a $1.7M yearling. Yet her last yearling to go through the ring was a $275K RNA who was running on the fair circuit in 2018. There is no crystal ball to say what this foal would have developed into or how he would have sold.

If they truly believe they were wronged by Rood & Riddle (which obviously they do), you’re probably not going to be willing to settle for the low end of the spectrum.

Also, I wonder what role insurance plays in this. I find it hard to believe this mating wasn’t insured, yet I know nothing of the specifics of how that works in a situation like this where the foal is born alive and dies from alleged malpractice. (Gumtree? Laurie?)

The malpractice insurance company handles the defense of the lawsuit. Right now, the H&D lawyers have probably only drafted the complaint, which is not expensive. They won’t incur much expense-wise unless they actually go to trial, which probably will not happen.

If there is an insurance policy that covers the foal, then H&D files a claim against that insurance company, and that company pays out and goes after (subrogates) R&R’s insurance company if they believe they have a malpractice case.

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While R&R did drop the ball on discovering the fractures. there were several fractures, and the lung was pierced by one or more.

Therefore the foal would , no matter how well it was handled, not survived. I doubt that even were the fractures discovered early it would have been a surgical candidate.

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I’m not seeing anything in the article provided that implies the lung was punctured, although I confess I skimmed to some extent. “Internal bleeding” sufficient to cause fatality in that sort of setting is usually from damage to the vessels that run along the ribs themselves, not from injury to the lung. Even if the lung had been punctured, with early detection and appropriate care (which may not necessarily include “surgery”), most patients of other species with rib fractures and localized lung injury due to the fractures have a good to excellent prognosis, and I can’t think of why it would different in a foal. It’s a different story in animals (and people) with, say, vehicular trauma that have rib fractures AND lung bruising due to blunt trauma and shear injury. Even then, many cases will survive with aggressive, appropriate care (which still may not require surgery and often does not). Also would be different story with an adult horse just from a logistical/mechanical standpoint of dealing with a patient that size, but a foal shouldn’t be that much harder to deal with from that perspective than a Great Dane or a person.

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@Palm Beach, that’s what I was wondering as well. If an insurance company has had to pay off on a claim on the foal, then it would make sense to me that they would sue Rood and Riddle to attempt to recover some of the money.

Where did you see it stated that the lung had been punctured by one or more ribs?
A punctured lung is not a death sentence as you make it out to be…

I worked for many years at a referral hospital, equine NICU was one of my favorite things… I’m surprised they were checking vitals only every four hours. I would think Q2-3 hours overnight would be more reasonable. Also, when physical exams are checked,there are call parameters – over/under certain values for temperature, pulse, respiratory rate and the clinician is called. The hospital I worked at had a pretty low caseload and foals/mares got individual attention. My hunch is that they were too busy to adequately care for this foal.

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Also, my initial reaction when I read one of the articles was – why didn’t they ultrasound the chest right away? Pretty standard.

I’m wondering if you can even purchase life insurance on an unborn/newborn foal. Talk about a specialty niche…

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You can. It’s called Prospective Foal Insurance and the rate is high. I think it was 13% last time we used it. But I don’t think you can just decide to insure an unborn foal for millions. The payout is usually related to the stud fee.

It’s very commonly used by people who buy broodmares at sales.

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