COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Lawyers fighting over whether relatives should have a legal right to the organs of an autopsied family member traded jabs after making oral arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday, each accusing the other side of defending a position that would yield lucrative payouts.
The case has drawn international attention for its ramifications to coroners, crime investigators, paramedics, doctors, funeral directors and followers of religions that espouse the importance of burying the whole body.
At issue is whether the parents of Christopher Albrecht had a right, or "protected interest," under Ohio law to their son's brain, which was removed during an autopsy following his death and never returned. If they did, their attorneys argue that the due process they are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution was violated.
Mark Landes, an attorney representing coroners in 87 of Ohio's 88 counties that are fighting the claim, suggested that victory in the Albrecht case would allow attorneys for the parents to bring potentially profitable lawsuits across the state.
While the Legislature amended Ohio law in 2006 to allow coroners to keep and destroy organs, attorneys for the Albrecht family are seeking class action status on cases dating from 1991 to 2006.
Landes said the attorneys' argument before the court "was all about ... whether or not lawyers, and people who don't even know that they've been harmed if they have, can get money."
He estimated that settlements over the handling of brains, hearts and other forensic specimens that were not returned to families between 1991 and 2006 could cost Ohio counties $90 million. He based the estimate on a settlement by Hamilton County in a similar case, in which the county agreed to pay $6,000 for every brain it had destroyed as medical waste.
Patrick Perotti, one of the lawyers for the family, countered that the government has its own monetary interests in the outcome of the case. He noted that the National Association of Medical Examiners argued in its brief that rights to body parts are significant to medical science.
He suggested that coroners want to use organs and other materials extracted during autopsies for research.
"That's why that national organization is here. They want to open those bodies and take out those parts so that they can use them for their own purposes to do analysis, medical experimentation, maybe scientific experimentation for product development," he said. "That's commercial. You talk about money, that's where money is."
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