Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca6-23-06032/USCOURTS-ca6-23-06032-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Blood-Horse, LLC
Appellee
Equine Podiatry Solutions, LLC
Appellant

Document Text:

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 25a0011n.06

Case No. 23-6032

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

EQUINE PODIATRY SOLUTIONS, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

BLOOD-HORSE, LLC, 

Defendant-Appellee.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE EASTERN

DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY

OPINION

Before: BATCHELDER, STRANCH, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

BATCHELDER, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which READLER, J., concurred, 

and STRANCH, J., concurred in part. STRANCH, J. (pp. 3–4), delivered a separate opinion 

concurring in part and dissenting in part.

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. Equine Podiatry Solutions (“EPS”) sued 

Blood-Horse, LLC, a news organization that covers the equestrian industry, seeking damages for 

alleged trade libel and defamation. The district court granted Blood-Horse’s motion to dismiss 

for failure to state a claim, and EPS appeals. We affirm. 

EPS develops chemical formulas to treat laminitis in horses, a potentially deadly disease 

that causes inflammation in a horse’s hooves, making them lame. EPS created a treatment formula 

called “Desmosphyrine,” which it marketed as a laminitis treatment on its website and social media

pages. On May 12, 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) sent a warning letter to EPS

regarding its marketing of Desmosphyrine. The letter warned EPS that the Federal Food, Drug, 

and Cosmetic Act (“FD&C Act”) prohibits the marketing and distribution of drugs without FDA 

approval intended to treat animal diseases. The FDA warning letter cited numerous examples from 

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EPS’s website and social media pages in which EPS described Desmosphyrine as laminitis 

treatment. Because the EPS statements established Desmosphyrine as a drug under the FD&C 

Act, but Desmosphyrine had not been approved by the FDA, its introduction into interstate 

commerce violated the FD&C Act. The warning letter highlighted the FDA’s concerns and 

afforded EPS an opportunity to address them.

On June 15, 2022, Blood-Horse published an article on its website about the FDA warning 

letter sent to EPS. Blood-Horse’s one page article, titled “FDA Warns Company Over Laminitis 

Treatment Claims,” mostly quoted the FDA warning letter. EPS sued Blood-Horse arguing that 

this article constituted trade libel and defamation for two reasons: (1) the title’s structure 

incorrectly suggested that the FDA warned EPS about Desmosphyrine efficacy, not its marketing 

claims; and (2) the article falsely claimed that EPS marketed its product as FDA approved. The 

district court rejected both claims because the title’s structure did not affect the truth of the 

statement, and the article accurately reported the FDA’s concerns. On appeal, EPS argues that the 

district court was mistaken in its assessment of the article and the warning letter. 

After carefully reviewing the record, the law, and the parties’ briefs on appeal, we conclude 

that the district court correctly set out the facts and the applicable law and correctly applied that 

law to those facts. The issuance of a full written opinion by this court would serve no useful 

purpose. Accordingly, for the reasons stated in the district court’s opinion, we AFFIRM.

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JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part. When 

assessing a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), courts must 

accept all well-pleaded factual allegations as true and examine whether the complaint contains 

“sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” 

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 

570 (2007)). So, when Equine Podiatry Solutions, LLC (“Equine Podiatry”) filed suit against 

Blood-Horse, Inc. under Kentucky’s trade libel and defamation laws after Blood-Horse published 

an article titled, “FDA Warns Company Over Laminitis Treatment Claims,” Equine Podiatry was 

entitled to the benefit of those well-pleaded allegations in stating a plausible claim for relief.

Among Equine Podiatry’s well-pleaded allegations were several indicating that the use of 

terminology regarding treatment in the equine industry is highly specialized, see, e.g, R.1, PageID 

11–12 (“What might appear to be a point of close distinction to a non-specialist was well-known 

to BloodHorse”), that the title of Blood-Horse’s article “disparages the quality of [Equine 

Podiatry’s product] by stating that the FDA warned Equine Podiatry over ‘treatment claims,” id., 

PageID 10, and that “[a] reasonable person would read the . . . title and conclude that there was a 

problem with the quality of [the product],” id. Taken together, these allegations required the 

district court to accept as true that, to Blood-Horse’s audience, “treatment claims” acted as a term 

of art referring specifically to assertions about the product’s effectiveness in treating laminitis. 

Lipman v. Budish, 974 F.3d 726, 740 (6th Cir. 2020). 

These allegations were not given their due weight. The district court granted BloodHorse’s motion to dismiss by reading “laminitis treatment” as interchangeable with Equine 

Podiatry’s product’s name, R.14, PageID 120 (“[A] plain reading of the text conveys that the FDA 

warned [Equine Podiatry] about the claims it was making regarding a laminitis treatment.”), in 

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contravention of those well-pleaded allegations. Though that interpretation may be reasonable, it 

should not have controlled at this stage of the litigation. Under Kentucky law, where the words at 

issue are capable of more than one meaning, the meaning to ascribe to those words is a question 

of fact which turns on how the readers to whom the publication is addressed would ordinarily 

understand it. Yancy v. Hamilton, 786 S.W.2d 854, 858 (Ky. 1989). By alleging facts about how 

readers to whom the article’s title was addressed would understand it, Equine Podiatry stated 

plausible claims to relief against Blood-Horse, and it should be afforded the opportunity to prove 

those allegations through discovery. With regard to the claims against Blood-Horse for its article’s 

title, therefore, I respectfully dissent. I concur in the disposition of Equine Podiatry’s other claims.

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