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UCLA Seeks OK on Bodies

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From a Times Staff Writer

UCLA will seek court permission this week to reopen its scandal-plagued willed-body program, following a ruling that it is largely immune from legal claims that it mishandled donated cadavers, a university lawyer said.

The program was suspended last year after its director and another man were placed on leave by UCLA and later arrested on suspicion of selling hundreds of body parts to medical research corporations for personal gain.

Louis M. Marlin, lawyer for the UCLA program, said last week that a recent decision by a California appellate court meant the program could reopen. Judges ruled that survivors of those who had willed their bodies to UCLA could not join together and sue the program for commingling remains and improperly disposing of them.

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“As a practical matter, the decision is the death knell for their litigation,” said Marlin.

The ruling came in response to lawsuits filed against UCLA in 1996 after similar allegations of commingling and improper disposal.

But Marlin said the decision would affect all claims against the program.

About 95% of all corpses willed to the UCLA program are dissected for teaching purposes in anatomy classes and for medical research. The 1996 lawsuit alleged that UCLA assured donors that the corpses would be handled separately and disposed of with dignity. Instead, according to the lawsuit, body parts were commingled and the remains were at times dumped in landfills.

The appeals court found that, unlike private crematory services, the university clearly intended to use the corpses in medical research.

“Without dwelling excessively on the details, it is difficult to imagine how a cadaver that has been segmented and reduced for anatomical study, organ-by-organ, muscle-by-muscle, bone-by-bone, can be reconstituted at the completion of the study,” Justice P.J. Boren wrote in an opinion published earlier this month.

Although state law bars the commingling of remains for private burials, it does not do so for the disposal of the cadavers used in medical research, the court ruled.

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The court also ruled that “despite nine years of litigation,” the complaining survivors had failed to prove that the corpses were improperly disposed of.

The most recent scandal erupted last year. Henry G. Reid, director of UCLA’s willed-body program, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft. Ernest V. Nelson, suspected of being a middleman who resold the cadavers to major research corporations, was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property. Both have denied wrongdoing.

UCLA has denied any wrongdoing and said it was not responsible for criminal acts committed by its employees.

In January, a UCLA commission proposed centralizing the management of the willed-body programs at the university’s five medical schools and implanting bar codes in corpses to help identify them.

One hurdle for plaintiffs is proving that the wishes of the dead were dishonored.

Although donors may not have intended to line anyone’s pockets, UCLA may well argue that the bodies did go to science as donors specified. That would mean UCLA did not break its pledge, Marlin said.

But Beverly Hills attorney Raymond P. Boucher said literature from the UCLA program states that body parts cannot legally be sold for profit -- suggesting to donors that their bodies would not be sold by UCLA. It also states that donors will receive a dignified burial -- a pledge he said UCLA violated.

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Last year, another group of survivors of donors went separately to court seeking an order to halt the program. The university did so voluntarily, under the supervision of Los Angeles County Superior Court, naming a commission to investigate.

Marlin said he would ask the judge in the case, Commissioner Bruce E. Mitchell, to lift his restraining order barring UCLA from moving donated cadavers.

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