Harvard University has agreed to pay $53 million to resolve a disturbing class-action lawsuit filed by families who alleged that a former morgue manager at the Ivy League school mishandled the remains of loved ones donated to Harvard Medical School — and, in some cases, sold their body parts on the black market.
A Boston state court judge gave preliminary approval Tuesday to the eight-figure settlement, which stems from the 2023 arrest of Cedric Lodge, the disgraced former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue.
Lodge, who spent nearly three decades working in Harvard’s morgue, was arrested in 2023 and later sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing and trafficking organs and body parts from cadavers that had been donated to the university for medical research.
Prosecutors said Lodge’s scheme dated back to at least 2018. He stole human remains — including “heads, faces, brains, skin and hands” — then transported them to his home in New Hampshire, where he and his wife sold them and shipped body parts to buyers in Pennsylvania and other locations.
One especially horrifying detail presented during the case involved Lodge supplying human skin to a buyer who intended to tan it into leather and use it to bind a book. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alisan Martin described the episode in a court filing as a “deeply horrifying reality.”
“In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face — perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing,” Martin said.
Lodge’s wife, Denise, was sentenced to just over one year in prison for helping him carry out the scheme.
The lawsuit, brought by dozens of relatives, accused Harvard of negligence. The families claimed the university was aware of Lodge’s grotesque side operation but failed to act until he was indicted in 2023.
A judge initially dismissed the cases, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court revived them in October, saying the families’ claims were sufficient to indicate the university acted in poor faith in handling the bodies, which were subjected to “horrific and undignified treatment” for years.
Harvard’s dean of faculty of medicine, George Daley, and Harvard Medical School’s dean for medical education, Bernard Chang, sent a message to the school community Monday calling Lodge’s actions “despicable, abhorrent, and a flagrant betrayal of our values as a medical community.”
In addition to the cash component of the settlement, Harvard Medical School was required to provide a statement to the impacted families via webinar to confirm Lodge’s criminal acts were “morally reprehensible.”
The school will also establish an annual scholarship for medical schools in honor of those whose bodies were donated to advance its research starting in the 2027-2028 academic year.
“We hope that this resolution ensures that this never happens to another family ever again,” John Morgan, whose law firm Morgan & Morgan represented families in the suit, said in a statement to the outlet.
Harvard did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
With Post wires
