Harvard to pay $53m settlement after morgue manager sold stolen body parts

Harvard University has agreed to pay $53 million (about £39 million) to settle lawsuits brought by families who said the university mishandled the bodies of loved ones donated to its medical school. The proposed settlement was submitted to a Boston court on Monday.

The litigation stems from former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge, who pleaded guilty to stealing and selling human remains on the black market. Prosecutors allege Lodge used his position overseeing the school's donated-body programme to dismember cadavers and sell parts to buyers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, in a scheme that ran from 2018 to 2021.

Lodge and six co-conspirators with no connection to Harvard were indicted and pleaded guilty in 2025. Lodge was sentenced in December to eight years in prison, while his wife, also involved in selling the remains, received a sentence of one year and a day.

Harvard students use donated bodies to study and practise medical procedures. Once the school has finished using them, cadavers are typically cremated and returned to families or buried in the university's medical cemetery.

Legal proceedings

Several civil lawsuits were filed against Harvard in 2023, alleging the university had ignored Lodge's misconduct for years before he was indicted. A state court judge initially dismissed the cases, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court revived them last autumn.

On Monday, both Harvard and the plaintiffs asked the court to approve the class-action settlement. A letter signed by George Daley, dean of the faculty of medicine, and Bernard Chang, dean for medical education, described Lodge's actions as morally reprehensible and inconsistent with the standards Harvard expects in the treatment of anatomical donors and their families.

Starting in the 2027-2028 academic year, the medical school will establish an annual scholarship for medical students in honour of its anatomical donors.