Brain Harvesting' Case Back in State Court After RICO Count Dropped

A New England woman who says her mother's brain was "harvested" without permission during an autopsy has dropped her federal racketeering claim, leading to remand of the suit to the Maine state court where it was originally filed.

The complaint, filed May 10 in Maine's Cumberland County Superior Court, accuses Bethesda, Md.-based Stanley Medical Research Institute and its top executive, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, of paying $150,000 to an independent contractor employed by the Maine Medical Examiner's Office for the brains of 99 people who died in the state from 1998 to 2003. The brains were allegedly taken without the consent of surviving family members.

"Consent forms," according to the complaint, "are purportedly missing for 31 of these brains and significant information is missing or peculiar about the 68 forms that do exist."

Court records say at least nine other suits based on the same alleged brain-harvesting scheme are pending in Maine state courts.

SMRI provides the brains of people with schizophrenia, manic depression and bipolar disorder to researchers and has one of the biggest postmortem "brain banks" in the world, according to the complaint. The company has "a network of 'harvesters' throughout the United States ... to find and secure fresh brains," the suit says. SMRI allegedly pays $1,000 for each brain.

"SMRI has never knowingly obtained any donation of brain or other tissue without the full consent of available next of kin," the company said in a statement on its Web site.

According to the complaint by Danielle Grant of South Portland, Maine, one of SMRI's networks operated out of the Maine Medical Examiner's Office.

The alleged harvester there, Matthew S. Cyr, was appointed by state medical examiner Dr. Margaret Greenwald in 1998 to act as a liaison between her office and SMRI, the suit says. At the time Cyr worked for Greenwald's office as an independent contractor and also served as a state funeral inspector for the Maine Board of Funeral Services, the complaint says.

Greenwald is not charged in the suit; Cyr is named as a defendant.

However, Cyr says in a Maine Superior Court filing that claims against him should be dismissed because Grant failed to comply with the Maine Health Security Act. The law requires plaintiffs to exhaust administrative remedies before filing a court suit in professional negligence cases where a defendant acts as an agent for a health care practitioner. In this case, Cyr says he was an agent for SMRI's executive director, Torrey, a medical doctor.

According to the suit, Grant's mother, Cynthia E. Grant, died Aug. 15, 2000, in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, and following an autopsy her brain was removed without the family's knowledge and shipped to SMRI in Maryland. The complaint asserts that the family had only authorized the taking of a small brain-tissue sample.

Grant says she found out her mother's whole brain had been harvested for SMRI when the Maine Attorney General's Office contacted her in "late 2004 or early 2005" to see if she had approved an organ donation.

"Upon being informed her mother's brain had gone to SMRI, Danielle immediately started crying," the suit says, noting she now suffers from nightmares, anxiety disorder and fear of dying. "The revelation that her mother's brain had been taken without her knowledge or permission has caused her severe emotional distress."

Grant's suit charges state law fraud, negligence, infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Maine Anatomical Gift Act, and included one count under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

SMRI removed the suit to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in Portland Aug. 1 on grounds that a claim under RICO gave the case federal jurisdiction.

Four days later Grant filed a motion consenting to the dismissal of the RICO count and seeking remand to the original state court. SMRI said in response it had no objections, and U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby ordered the case back to the Maine Superior Court Aug. 17.

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.