After officials say up to 400 body parts were stolen and sold from the Harvard University medical morgue, 150 people have joined in a class-action lawsuit against Harvard and the morgue's former manager as of Friday morning.
The lawsuit, filed in Suffolk County Superior Court, was filed shortly after families began to be notified that their loved ones bodies were potentially "unlawfully mishandled, stolen and sold" while in custody of the Harvard Medical School.
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The suit alleges that Harvard University and Cedric Lodge, the former morgue manager accused of inviting people to the medical center to choose which body parts they would like to purchase, breached their duty of care and were negligent towards the donated cadavers.
Harvard has been reaching out by mail to families of the people whose bodies may have been mistreated. Six people face federal charges over the allegations, including the Lodge and his wife and a woman who's run a horror-themed oddities shop in Peabody, Massachusetts, called Kat's Creepy Creations.
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"The law recognizes that human beings are entitled to be treated with decency and dignity after death including by not having their bodies mishandled, viewed, dismembered, and/or sold by those entrusted with them," the lawsuit says.
In response to the scheme, Lodge was fired from the medical center on May 6, and Harvard released a statement calling the ploy an "abhorrent betrayal" to the campus and community.
This is one of two lawsuits filed following the incident.
A New Hampshire family is also suing after learning that a relative might have been one of the people whose body was tampered with.
Harvard tells NBC10 Boston it does not comment on pending litigation.
