The mess of lawsuits filed within the wake of the Harvard Medical School body-parts trafficking scandal may turn into simpler if a movement to consolidate the instances filed in a state courtroom succeeds.
The movement seeks to mix eight lawsuits filed in Suffolk Superior Court concentrating on Harvard for culpability, arguing that the “instances arising out of the desecration and mishandling of stays entrusted to Harvard’s Anatomical Gift Program … all contain frequent questions of legislation and truth.
“Consolidation will avoid unnecessary duplication and waste of judicial resources, will streamline and simplify the proceedings, will prevent undue delay of the case, will provide parties with greater efficiency and will assist in securing the ‘just, speedy and expensive’ determination of the issues in this case,” the movement continues.
It additionally designates two attorneys, Jeffrey Catalano and Kathryn Barnett, as co-lead counsel within the proposed merger of the lawsuits, with different attorneys who had filed lawsuits serving as liaison or members of the plaintiffs’ steering committee.
“These families have suffered an unthinkable betrayal by Harvard, and I’m honored that they have put their trust in Morgan & Morgan to fight for them and to seek justice for their loved ones,” Barnett, of the legislation agency Morgan & Morgan stated following the submitting.
“I’m grateful that so many esteemed law firms have entrusted me to help lead this litigation. We are all working together to fight for every case and are committed to holding Harvard accountable for their responsibility in this atrocity,” she continued.
Harvard has repeatedly acknowledged that it doesn’t touch upon ongoing litigation.
Catalano, together with legal professional Jonathan Sweet of the Milton-based Keches Law Group, P.C., had been the primary to file a lawsuit, wherein they estimated that the elements of as much as 400 our bodies may very well be concerned. Barnett’s lawsuit seems to have been the fourth, all of which had been searching for class-action standing, filed within the fallout of the alleged body-parts trafficking ring.
In June, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania introduced that a number of individuals presupposed to be linked to a hoop trafficking physique elements stolen from the morgue related to the Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program had been indicted.
Those defendants embody Cedric Lodge — a morgue worker who in accordance with one of many lawsuits drives a automobile with a plate studying “GRIM-R,” for “Grim Reaper” — of Goffstown, N.H., and 4 others, together with his spouse, Denise Lodge.
One of the defendants, a Pennsylvania man named Jeremy Lee Pauley, whose web site describes him as “the lead preservation specialist of retired medical specimens and curator to historic remains and artifacts” for his museum, Memento Mori, has already pleaded out and admitted to the factual allegations of the ring.
The story has captivated readers, and left many members of the family of those that donated their physique to science horrified. As Jack Porter, whose spouse Dr. Raya Porter had willed her physique to this system and whose physique Porter suspects of being bought piecemeal, advised the Herald, “What bothers me is that there’s somebody in some basement somewhere in this country or elsewhere fondling my wife’s body parts.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”