PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) – A company sort-of associated with a former body parts dealer now serving a nine-year prison sentence has won a key court victory against family members who tried to pin blame on it.
Platinum Medical had judgment for it and owners Charles and Amy Oddo affirmed on April 29 by the Arizona Court of Appeals, which ruled against 14 plaintiffs who charged them with negligence and vicarious liability for the actions of Arthur Rathburn.
Platinum offers medical education programs and procured cadavers from Biological Resource Center, which worked with individuals who wanted their bodies donated to science.
The owner of BRC became a 9% owner of Platinum in 2013 and had previously provided hundreds of bodies to Rathburn, who ran a scheme in which he misled more than 100 training courses about the conditions of the bodies. Some of them were infected with HIV and hepatitis.
Federal prosecutors said his lab was filled with human heads and other parts in Rubbermaid contains, with some bodies frozen together and missing limbs.
The 14 plaintiffs - family members of the deceased – sued BRC and Platinum. Their claims against Platinum included intentional infliction of emotional distress, mishandling of bodies and racketeering, among other things.
They claimed Gore was an owner of Platinum when he committed the acts that led to him pleading guilty to one count of illegal control of a criminal enterprise. But Platinum never had access to donor forms or the donors themselves, during the donation process.
Dooming their claims was the fact that the plaintiffs’ family members signed their forms before Gore came aboard Platinum.
“Here, it was undisputed that Gore’s employment agreement was dated May 24, 2013. It is likewise undisputed that all Appellants’ consent forms for donations were signed prior to this date,” Judge Brian Furuya wrote.
“Further, the record indicates that Appellants did not provide admissible and non-conclusory evidence in support of their argument that Platinum had the right to control Gore’s conduct before Gore was employed by Platinum.
“Thus, as to these Appellants, all of whom had signed consent forms that predated Gore’s employment with Platinum, the superior court noted that Platinum could not be vicariously liable to these Appellants for Gore’s actions. Given these circumstances, the court did not err in determining that Appellants could not recover via respondeat superior.”