Massachusetts Supreme Court resurrects Harvard cadaver case 

(CN) — Harvard University will face claims filed by relatives of deceased people whose cadavers were donated to its medical school, then potentially mishandled or sold by a former employee, a Massachusetts Supreme Court panel ruled Monday.

Cedric Lodge was federally charged in June 2023 with stealing parts of cadavers donated for research purposes, including bones, brains and skin, and shipping them to buyers through the mail.

A four-judge panel said the 47 plaintiffs have sufficient evidence to claim that Lodge’s employers — Harvard and the managing director of the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift Program, Mark Cicchetti — acted in bad faith, in violation of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, and reversed the dismissal of claims against those parties.

“Instead of the dignified treatment and disposal of human remains required by the act, the donors’ remains were ghoulishly dismembered and sold for profit under the most horrifying of circumstances,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote in the 31-page ruling. “This horrific and undignified treatment continued for years and involved numerous donors.”

Though the panel focused on Harvard’s conduct, Lodge’s conduct demonstrated where Harvard failed to act in good faith while operating and overseeing its morgue, Kafker wrote, considering it had little to no controls in place to prevent Lodge’s conduct.

“Instead, according to the allegations, an unsupervised Lodge was able to dismember the donated bodies; bring unauthorized people into the morgue to inspect and purchase body parts, including during working hours; and carry body parts out of the morgue for years,” Kafker wrote.

He continued: “Other red flags, such as his license plate describing himself as the ‘Grim-R[eaper],’ which revealed an unprofessional insensitivity given his position in a medical school morgue, were also ignored or tolerated.”

The panel emphasized that Harvard’s conduct may have constituted “peculiarly pervasive noncompliance” — a higher bar than isolated acts of noncompliance, which alone couldn’t defeat a good faith defense under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.

In the case, a Pennsylvania man is accused of sending $37,000 to Lodge for body parts. Another purported purchaser was Katrina Maclean, owner of a specialty store called “Kat’s Creepy Creations.”

Criminal charges against Lodge were based on selling and receiving stolen goods; no federal law expressly bans trafficking in human remains, but at least eight states have outlawed the practice.

The lack of regulation stems from an old legal principle that no one could own a dead body. As a result, while the donation of dead bodies for transplants is highly regulated, the donation of remains for medical instruction and research remains a legal gray area.

During oral arguments in February, Harvard’s lawyer, Martin Murphy of Manatt Phelps, said the university wasn’t liable for Lodge’s actions because they were outside the scope of his employment.

“The more outrageous the employee’s actions, the less the employer is responsible,” he argued.

Kafker pushed back. “The more excessive they are, the less responsible the employer is. There’s something bothersome about that. I just can’t get my arms around it,” he said.

“It does seem problematic at the end of the day that the institution that got the body and benefited [isn’t] responsible for its manager,” the judge added then.

Harvard did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday’s ruling, in which the judges remanded the case to trial court for further consideration.

Joining Kafker on the panel were Chief Justice Kimberly Budd and Justices Serge Georges Jr. and Frank Gaziano.

Follow @NinaPullano