A proposed $53 million settlement would pay relatives and designated representatives of people who donated their bodies to Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gift Program, and the deadline to file a claim is December 9, 2026. The money resolves lawsuits over a former morgue manager who stole donated remains and sold them. Harvard denies the allegations and the court has not ruled on the settlement, but the claim process is already open. Families that do nothing receive no cash, and the day claims close is also the day the judge holds the final approval hearing.
The manager was Cedric Lodge. News reports of the case say he pleaded guilty in federal court and is serving an eight-year prison sentence for taking heads, brains, skin, bones and other parts from donated bodies and selling them to buyers he reached through social media and cell phones. Court records put the thefts as far back as 2018. His wife, Denise Lodge, was sentenced to just over a year for helping him, and six buyers have also pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
Who is in the Harvard morgue class
Eligibility turns on a relationship and a date range. According to the claim site, the class covers a spouse, registered domestic partner, child, parent or sibling of a donor whose body left the Harvard Morgue and was sent for cremation or burial between January 1, 2003, and March 31, 2023. The person a donor named on the Instrument of Anatomical Gift also counts, as does anyone who received a Harvard letter about the lawsuit around June 14 or December 7, 2023. Grandchildren are included only for donors whose bodies left the morgue from 2018 on…