May 1, 2008 - Families File Suit in Body Parts Scandal

Families filed suit against funeral directors, human tissue services, and others Tuesday, claiming claim that over 1,000 relatives' bodies were dismembered and sold in an illegal body-parts ring.

The families allege that their relatives' corpses were harvested for medical use without their consent.

The class action suit charges seven individuals, as well as the funeral homes and human tissue services where they worked, with conspiracy, negligence, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The seven individuals were indicted by a grand jury inSeptember. They are accused of harvesting bones, skin, and tendons under unsanitary conditions and peddling them to various hospitals, allegedly earning $3.8 million.

According to the grand jury report, the body parts from 1,007 cadavers were acquired in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey between February 2004 and September 2005. The report described the scandal as "ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal."

After removing body parts from the corpses, the accused allegedly replaced harvested bone and tissue with PVC piping "so that bodies would still appear normal for their pending visitations, funerals, or post-mortem proceedings."

The defendants are also accused of falsifying medical documents which gave "consent" for the tissues to be harvested.

"We must hold the responsible parties and their accomplices accountable," an attorney representing the families said. "These families have experienced terrible suffering -- they deserve to know the truth and get on with their lives."

The families' attorneys are also representing the hundreds of people that received body parts harvested in the scandal, and their families.

The individuals named in the suit are Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, his brother Louis Garzone, and James McCafferty.

Five of the seven face criminal charges when their trial begins on September 2.

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