Harvard agrees to pay $53 million to settle lawsuits over morgue body part thefts
Harvard University said it has agreed to pay $53 million over lawsuits brought by families of donors whose body parts were stolen from its medical school's morgue.
The illicit activity came to light in 2023, when the former Harvard Medical School morgue manager was indicted for conspiring to steal body parts from cadavers donated to the Boston institution and sell them on the black market.
Harvard officials called the former manager's actions "despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community" in an update this week on civil lawsuits brought against Harvard in connection with morgue manager's conduct.
During a hearing on Tuesday, a state court judge in Boston granted preliminary approval of the class-action settlement agreement, according to Reuters.
Harvard said the settlement agreement will allow the institution and plaintiffs to avoid "prolonged litigation," and that the process to distribute the funds is expected to take several months.
"These events do not reflect the reverence we hold for the altruistic individuals who selflessly donate their bodies to our Anatomical Gift Program (AGP) to provide essential educational opportunities to medical and dental students, practicing surgeons, and allied health professionals," Harvard University Dean of the Faculty of Medicine George Daley and Harvard Medical School Dean for Medical Education Bernard Chang said. "We reaffirm our deep sorrow and empathy for the families of donors who may have been impacted."
School officials said Harvard Medical School will also establish an annual scholarship starting next year "in appreciation and in honor of all of our anatomical donors."
A superior court judge initially dismissed the lawsuits, finding that Harvard was not liable due to the "good faith" defense under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed that decision last year, finding that Harvard did not act in good faith due to its "extraordinary failure to adequately supervise" the morgue.
"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," the court stated in its opinion.
The former morgue manager, Cedric Lodge, stole organs and other parts of cadavers from 2018 to 2022, according to prosecutors. He pleaded guilty last year to transporting and selling the stolen human remains across multiple states and was sentenced to 96 months in prison.
Seven other defendants in the case have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to imprisonment in related cases, according to the Department of Justice. Most recently, Katrina Maclean, 47, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was sentenced on Tuesday to two years in prison for interstate transportation of stolen property.
Maclean admitted to buying remains from Lodge that had been stolen from Harvard Medical School and entering the morgue to examine cadavers, the DOJ said.
