This week, three years after the criminal case became public, Harvard announced that it had reached a $53 million class action settlement agreement to compensate families of anatomical donors whose body parts were stolen by a former morgue manager. A court granted preliminary approval to the settlement the following day. Harvard said it would seek to establish two class action settlement funds totaling $53 million, with distributions to be handled by a third-party administrator. The Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and the Dean of Medical Education also announced the establishment of an annual financial aid scholarship for medical students in appreciation of and honor for anatomical donors.
By agreeing to end the prolonged civil litigation, Harvard looks to move beyond the extremely embarrassing misuse of its Anatomical Gift Program. The families’ claims included negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), arising from the criminal conduct of Cedric Lodge, the former Harvard Medical School morgue manager. With preliminary approval in hand, Harvard can hope the issue never rises from the dead.
Kinda Feel Like Watching “Young Frankenstein” Now
Human cadavers are an invaluable teaching resource for medical students, allowing them to see the inside of a body and learn how certain procedures are performed. They are also difficult to obtain. In addition to cost, factors such as local laws, high demand, cultural mores, and religious beliefs can severely limit the available supply.
Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program (AGP), which has existed since the 1960s, is its whole-body donation program for medical education, teaching, and research. After study or research, remains are cremated and either returned to the family if the donation agreement so provides or interred in a designated cemetery. Unfortunately, someone saw a path to profit as a third option.
Federal prosecutors said Lodge participated in stealing, selling, and transporting remains taken from the HMS morgue from 2018 through at least March 2020. He took human remains to his home in New Hampshire, then sold or shipped them to buyers. The stolen remains included organs, brains, skin, hands, faces, dissected heads, and other body parts. After an FBI investigation aided by HMS, authorities arrested and indicted Lodge in 2023. Lodge pleaded guilty in May 2025 to interstate transport of stolen human remains and was sentenced on December 16, 2025, to eight years in prison. His wife, Denise Lodge, received a sentence of 12 months and one day for her role.
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Harvard’s willingness to settle the lawsuits marks a change from its previous stance. Forty-seven relatives of anatomical donors brought 12 actions asserting claims including negligence, negligent hiring, supervision or retention, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, emotional-distress claims, and statutory claims. Harvard argued that it was shielded by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA)’s good-faith provision.
A Superior Court judge dismissed the consolidated claims against Harvard and two AGP officials. But in 2025, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated claims against Harvard and the AGP’s managing director, Mark Cicchetti, based on Harvard’s alleged direct failures in overseeing the program. The court left in place the dismissal of claims against AGP manager Tracey Fay and held that Lodge’s theft for personal profit fell outside the scope of his employment, foreclosing respondeat-superior claims.
Given the importance of anatomical donations to medical and dental education, HMS hopes Lodge’s perfidy does not dissuade families from continuing to donate. After the indictment, HMS appointed an external expert panel to review AGP and morgue practices. Its 2023 report identified improvements involving security, access control, and inventory tracking, including measures the panel said should be completed or strengthened. Given how expensive a lesson Harvard just endured, those changes were likely a step in the right direction.
