Plaintiff Kim Gentry trains riders and horses in dressage. This professional negligence case concerns the untimely death of Gentry’s beloved horse, Dantique, and Gentry’s dashed hopes to perpetuate Dantique’s bloodline.
Plaintiff retained an equine appraiser, Tanja Schnuderl, as well as a veterinary expert, Robert Boswell. Defendants sought to exclude the testimony of both experts.
Equine Appraisal Expert Witness
Tanja Schnuderl is a certified appraiser with the American Society of Equine Appraisers and has established her own equine appraisal business.
She is also the Director of International Services at The Equine Expert LLC and serves as consultant and expert witness with specialties in barn management, horse behavior and appraising.
Veterinary Medicine Expert Witness
Robert P. Boswell is a 1985 graduate of the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine and has devoted the entirety of his career to the practice of equine medicine and surgery with an emphasis on equine sports medicine.
Discussion by the Court
Tanja Schnuderl
Schnuderl calculated the value of the oocytes by taking the average price of five embryos (which are fertilized oocytes), multiplying that cost by twenty, which was the number of oocytes removed from Dantique’s ovaries, and then applying a twenty percent reduction “to accommodate for the 80% success rate of embryo transfers and end up at the fair market value per oocyte.”
Defendants’ beef is with the twenty percent reduction. They argued that this adjustment “is not based upon facts or data, and therefore not reliable.”
Here, Defendants are not attacking the methodology Schnuderl used—in fact, they concede that “her calculation of the ‘comparable’ figures appears reasonable”—but rather the source of her twenty percent reduction.
Because attacks on the source of an expert’s opinion go to weight and not admissibility, Defendants have not established a basis to exclude Schnuderl’s opinions as unreliable.
Robert Boswell
Boswell’s report stated that because “the ovary acts as an impenetrable ’tissue container’ for the oocytes,” contamination could only have occurred at the Hospital, not when the ovaries were removed. He said that contamination could result from improper cleaning and rinsing of the ovaries, and that the oocytes should have been placed in separate vials of separation media so that if one oocyte was contaminated, it would not contaminate the others.
At Boswell’s deposition on January 16, 2026, when asked whether he could “identify a breach of the standard of care,” Boswell responded that a breach occurred at some point during the oocyte removal process. More specifically, Boswell pointed to combining all of the oocytes into one vial of separation media and a lack of proper aseptic technique as breaches of that standard. Boswell did not include this ultimate conclusion in his report because he “thought it was self-evident.”
Analysis
Defendants first took issue with Boswell’s testimony that Defendants breached the standard of care, arguing that this is a new opinion that was not timely disclosed in Boswell’s report. True, Boswell did not use the words “standard of care” in his report except to describe his view of the Hospital’s failure to investigate the contamination. But he did explain that contamination must have occurred at the Hospital; improper cleaning and rinsing of the ovaries could have caused it, and that the oocytes should have been placed in different maturation media. So Boswell’s deposition testimony is not a new opinion—rather, it is the same opinion reworded in response to questioning from Defendants’ counsel.
Defendants next argue that Boswell is unqualified because he has never practiced equine reproductive medicine, nor has he fertilized embryos using these procedures. But Boswell is not testifying about the specifics of equine reproductive medicine or embryo fertilization. His opinions relate to proper aseptic technique and sources of contamination—broad principles of veterinary medicine that a veterinarian with forty years of experience is certainly qualified to testify to, even if he has not performed the specific procedure at issue.
Defendants finally argued that Boswell’s methodology is unreliable because his opinions are based on “his own assumptions, conclusions, and anecdotes” instead of data and studies.
Here, Boswell reaches his conclusions—on the timing of contamination, causes of contamination, and breaches of the standard of care—through his personal experience as a veterinarian combined with a review of the medical records and relevant depositions, which are reliable bases for his non-scientific opinions.
As a result, the Court allowed both experts, Schnuderl and Boswell, to testify.
Held
The Court denied Defendants’ motions to strike Plaintiffs’ experts, Tanja Schnuderl and Robert P. Boswell.
Key Takeaway
An expert may use their experience to reach non-scientific testimony. In this case, Boswell reaches his conclusions—on the timing of contamination, causes of contamination, and breaches of the standard of care—through his personal experience as a veterinarian combined with a review of the medical records and relevant depositions.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Gentry V. Prell |
| Docket Number: | 5:25cv50 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Florida Middle |
| Order Date: | July 02, 2026 |
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