The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has suspended New York racetrack veterinarian Michael Galvin for two years for failing to submit thousands of records of treatments he administered to horses during 2023 and 2024, according to a ruling posted on HISA’s website.
According to the ruling, Galvin, who has a checkered history with regulators and tracks, did not submit records for “over 3,000 treatments” of horses from a period running from Jan. 1, 2023, to March 7, 2024, the ruling said. In addition to the two-year suspension, Galvin was fined $25,000.
Kim Bonstrom, one of the attorneys who represented Galvin in his defense of the charges, said that he would file an appeal on behalf of Galvin within the 10-day period allotted by the ruling.
Bonstrom said that the appeal would center on the ruling’s lack of citations for case law or U.S. law. The ruling was written by Barbara Borden, chief state steward of Kentucky, who is a member of HISA’s Internal Adjudication Panel.
“There’s not one case cited, there’s not any citations to law,” Bonstrom said. “It’s her opinion that HISA rules trump the laws of the U.S.”
(Veterinarians, trainers, and owners are required by federal law to register with HISA to operate at tracks under its jurisdiction, and the registration subjects the covered persons to the rules of HISA.)
The suspension was handed down after a lengthy investigation into Galvin’s business practices that began after an investigator for the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit copied a notebook found in Galvin’s truck during a search on Sept. 2, 2023, at Belmont Park, according to the ruling.
The notebook contained written notes on treatments administered to specific horses on specific dates. Investigators at HISA and HIWU compared the written notes to records Galvin had submitted to the HISA portal and found that the database did not contain records of many of the treatments.
Roughly six months after the search, HIWU then examined business records for trainers and owners who paid Galvin to treat their horses and found similar deficiencies, according to the ruling.
During a Feb. 24 hearing this year to discuss the charges, Melissa Stormer, a HIWU investigative analyst who created a spreadsheet to itemize the discrepancies, testified that Galvin “had not entered treatment records for several horses that had either suffered injuries during their race or that died or were euthanized after they raced.”
Stormer also testified that after HIWU seized the business records of trainers and owners who used Galvin as a client in February and March of 2024, the veterinarian submitted 2,474 records to the HISA portal over the next 1 1/2 months, though “many of those treatment records” were submitted past the 24-hour deadline.
In 1998, Galvin was banned by the NYRA after the association accused the veterinarian of using a nasal-gastric tube on a filly on the day she was entered to race. The decision was overturned by a federal court on appeal. Galvin then sued the NYRA for $30 million, but the two parties reached a $500,000 settlement shortly after a trial opened.
After the settlement, New York’s racing regulatory commission eventually suspended Galvin for 45 days for “improper record-keeping” based on his use of the tube, but that penalty was reduced to a $250 fine on appeal.
In 2021, NYRA again banned Galvin, citing “operational and administrative issues” of his practice. The ban lasted less than one week, with NYRA restoring his credential to operate after the veterinarian “took action to address these issues,” according to a NYRA spokesman at the time.
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