Drug & Device News

A body-parts-for-cash scandal that sent three Philadelphia funeral directors to prison last year has sparked a wave of litigation in the state and federal courts, and a federal judge's recent ruling on insurance coverage promises to keep the cases alive. In a major setback for the insurer, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson in Philadelphia rejected the argument that guilty pleas by the participants conclusively proved that all of the conduct was intentional and therefore could not be treated as negligent conduct that triggers insurance coverage.

Funeral home operators Louis and Gerald Garzone and their employee, James McCafferty Jr., have already confessed that they sold corpses to Biomedical Tissue Services, a New Jersey-based company that took bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Among the corpses plundered was that of veteran BBC broadcaster and “Masterpiece Theatre” host Alistair Cooke. Judge Baylson determined that each of the of the lawsuits had to be individually screened to determine whether any of them contained negligence-based claims that would trigger coverage under the funeral home's policies.