BOSTON (Legal Newsline) - More law firms are getting into litigation over alleged organ-harvesting at Harvard Medical School.
Edward Bopp at Boston's Monahan & Associates, joined by Pennsylvania firms Bochetto & Lentz and Sauder Schelkopf, on July 13 in Suffolk Superior Court filed at least the third lawsuit against Harvard since federal prosecutors unveiled the alleged scheme.
Former morgue manager Cedric Lodge and four others at Harvard are accused of selling heads, brains, skin, bones and other human remains from the corpses of people who donated their bodies to science. They face federal indictments that were announced in June.
Previously, the Keches Law Group filed a class action, which was followed 12 days later by the firm Morgan & Morgan.
The suit from Monahan & Associates has Anne Weiss as its named plaintiff.
"While Plaintiff's father donated his remains to HMS by choice, his authorization was premised on the purpose of the donation - to advance scientific and academic knowledge," the suit says.
"His donation was, clearly, not for the purpose of mutilation to satisfy the twisted desires of the black-market corpse trade."
The suit says Harvard failed to notice what was "in plain sight" and that Lodge had a personalized license plate that read "Grim-R," as in the grim reaper.
"The Grim Reaper posted images of himself dressed up in the garb of an undertaker in a Dickens novel with a black top hat and overcoat," the suit says. "His license plate and open association with macabre hobbies revealed his view of his job at the morgue as a backdrop for his fantasies instead of a place of reverence and respect.
"This 'undertaker' invited his cohorts who fetishized human body parts to the morgue to shop. The Grim Reaper publicized his mocking moniker all while treating the morgue as an amusement park attraction for his friends and customers."
Despite this, Harvard continued to give Lodge "unfettered access" to human remains.
"HMS failed to supervise and monitor their employee and failed to establish and/or enforce basic precautions that would have prevented the establishment and operation of a body parts bazaar within their facility," the suit says.