Suit Targets Firms That Purchased Body Parts

A prominent Los Angeles law firm filed a lawsuit Tuesday against companies that it alleged had bought body parts stolen from cadavers that had been donated to UCLA’s medical school.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the widow of a man whose body had been donated to UCLA. The suit was seeking class-action status for other donors and was at least the second such suit to be filed since the scandal about the sale of body parts broke earlier this month.

The attorneys at Geragos & Geragos, who filed the lawsuit, said that their litigation would extend beyond UCLA and take on the body parts industry, which is estimated to generate about $500 million annually nationwide. By some estimates, as many as 8,000 donated bodies annually are sold to nonprofits, some of which are closely tied to major drug companies.

The head of UCLA medical school’s willed body program, Henry G. Reid, was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of grand theft. An associate, Ernest V. Nelson, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. Search warrant documents alleged that Reid had sold parts from the school’s cadavers to Nelson, who then sold them to others. State law prohibits selling body parts for profit.

“We believe this is part of a larger problem,” said attorney Mark Geragos of the UCLA case. He and his co-counsel and brother Matt Geragos cited other cases of potentially illegal body part trading -- such as seven bodies that were donated to Tulane University and then were turned over to the Army for research and blown up in an explosives test.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Carol Francis Martin, followed her husband’s wishes and donated his remains to UCLA with the expectation that the body was to be cremated and buried after being used for experiments at the medical school, according to the complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

A previous lawsuit filed last week targeted UCLA for allegedly allowing the sales to continue for seven years. The lawsuit filed Tuesday does not name the university, although UCLA is expected to be added as a defendant, but does name Nelson’s firm, as well as Johnson & Johnson and the subsidiary of that company that bought some of the allegedly pilfered body parts.