Harvard will pay $53 million to settle multiple lawsuits filed by families of those whose body parts may have been stolen from the medical school’s morgue, the school announced in a letter to the community on Monday.
The settlement also includes a pledge by Harvard Medical School to hold a live webinar with the families to “provide a statement” confirming that the thefts by the school’s former morgue manager, Cedric Lodge, were “morally reprehensible and inconsistent with the standards that Harvard University and HMS expect for the treatment of anatomical donors and their loved ones.” The letter, signed by HMS deans George Daley and Bernard Chang, said the school would also create a scholarship fund for medical students “in appreciation and in honor of all our anatomical donors.”
A Suffolk Superior Court judge on Tuesday granted preliminary approval of the settlement. A final approval hearing is scheduled for December.
“This case revealed …. that the famous medical ethical principle of do no harm applies to the dead as well as to the living,” said Jeffrey Catalano, an attorney with Keches Law Group who represented some of the plaintiffs.
A Harvard Medical School spokesperson said they would not be granting interviews and provided no additional comment.
The settlement agreement was first reported by the Harvard Crimson.
Lodge, a longtime employee of Harvard Medical School, began stealing body parts from donors in the morgue in 2018, according to federal prosecutors. The scandal became public in June 2023 when Lodge and his wife were indicted for selling the body parts to collectors and traders across the country.
The Lodges eventually pleaded guilty to charges of interstate transport of stolen goods — the goods being skin, brains and hearts removed from donors who had intended for their bodies to be studied by medical students. In December, Cedric Lodge was sentenced to eight years in prison, while Denise Lodge was sentenced to a year and a day.
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A slew of lawsuits followed Lodge’s indictment. The suits were initially thrown out by a Suffolk Superior Court judge who agreed with Harvard that a state law governing body and organ donation protected it from any legal claims. The school insisted it had acted in “good faith” and wasn’t aware of Lodge’s activities, which went on for years.
But last fall, the state’s highest court revived the families’ lawsuits. The Supreme Judicial Court wrote in its opinion that Harvard exhibited “extraordinary failure” in supervising Lodge.
An attorney for some of the plaintiffs, Shannon Pennock of Morgan & Morgan, said in a statement Tuesday that the SJC decision made history.
“As a result, anatomical gift programs will no longer be assured blanket immunity to these kinds of lawsuits,” she said. “We are confident that anatomical gift programs across the state will be stronger because of them.”
As part of the settlement, Harvard will hold a webinar with the families. Attorney Jonathan Sweet, of Keches Law Group, said that message from Harvard Medical School leadership is especially important — and uncommon.
“ It’s very, very rare in in our world for a defendant leader to do this,” he said. “But this is a really unusual case.”
“ Harvard is a brand name in this, in this country,” he continued. “There’s a lot of public trust that goes into donating bodies to Harvard Medical School … The statement that we’re talking about is intended to restore any trust that’s been lost.”
A third-party administrator will notify potential class members and distribute settlement funds, which could take several months.
Harvard estimated there are 438 donors who left the morgue between 2018 and March 2023, when Lodge is accused of his crimes, according to court documents.
After Lodge was indicted, Harvard named an outside panel to review the anatomical gift program and make recommendations. The panel found the school lacked formal policies and had little oversight of the morgue’s day-to-day workings.
Notably, the panel was not tasked with determining how Lodge may have carried out the thefts. Harvard released a summary of the findings, but withheld the full report from the public.
The settlement requires Harvard to tell the donor families what kind of improvements have been made to the anatomical gift program.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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