Case of missing innards unprecedented in state court

By Steve Kanigher

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010 | 2 a.m.

The curious case of a young Englishman’s missing organs is forcing the Nevada Supreme Court to take its first stand on the mishandling of human remains.

London-area aluminum trader Richard Boorman was 29 when he flew to Las Vegas for a bachelor party in 2005. He wound up being pronounced dead at Desert Springs Hospital. His relatives were left questioning how the seemingly healthy former amateur boxing champion had died on vacation.

The Clark County coroner’s office autopsied and sent Boorman’s body to a mortuary for embalming so he could be sent home.

When the coroner cited acute cocaine and alcohol intoxication as the cause of Boorman’s death, his relatives were eager to have a second autopsy conducted in England.

They were unable to get a complete one, however, because when Boorman’s body came home in July 2005, his heart, brain, liver, kidneys and lungs didn’t, British authorities said. They examined the body because a U.K. autopsy is standard procedure when a British citizen dies abroad.

The London tabloids had a field day with the story. “Man loses organs in Las Vegas,” the Sun in London told its readers, while the Daily Mirror used the mother’s quote in its headline: “Who has stolen my son’s organs?”

The reports hinted that the missing organs may have been taken for medical research.

Boorman’s family sued Clark County, its coroner’s office and the Nevada Memorial Cremation Society, where Boorman’s body had been embalmed.

The case started in federal court in 2007, but it’s nowhere near resolved.

When U.S. District Judge Philip Pro got to a point where he needed to make rulings based on state law, he made the rare request of asking the state Supreme Court to hear arguments from all parties involved so that it could establish a legal precedent.

The Nevada Supreme Court, in other words, has never settled fundamental legal questions related to mishandling of human remains and needs to, Pro said. So the justices will hear oral arguments in the Boorman case today.

Among the questions the federal judge wants the Supreme Court to answer is who is entitled to sue to collect damages for the emotional distress caused by the mishandling of remains. Pro said Nevada hasn’t established whether that would be any of the deceased’s immediate family, just the person statutorily entitled to the remains or just the person who contracted for funeral services, for example.

Nevada also has not addressed questions such as whether the person who alleges the emotional distress had to have observed “the insult to their loved one’s remains,” Pro wrote.

Another question is whether state law would require that there be physical evidence of emotional distress, Pro added.

The plaintiffs in this case include Boorman’s mother, brothers, grandmother, cousin and aunt.

“The fact that they do not know what exactly has happened to Richard’s organs causes them extreme distress, anxiety, upset and mental anguish,” argued family attorney Jonathan Capp of Oceanside, Calif. The family seeks damages from defendants for fraudulent misrepresentation.

The family alleges that the coroner’s office took or lost the organs, falsely claimed to have turned them over to the cremation society, and conspired with that company to conceal the whereabouts of the organs. The family also alleges that cremation employees stuffed a sheet inside the body to conceal the fact that the organs were missing.

The family also alleges that another defendant, coroner employee Monique Beverly, initially completed a release form indicating that the organs were not with the body when they were released to the embalmer. She then corrected the form to indicate that the organs were placed in a bag and transported with the body, the family said.

The coroner’s office, quoting Beverly’s deposition, responded that she “inadvertently” checked off the form indicating the organs weren’t present but “corrected the mistake by crossing it out and checking the correct entry on the release form” stating that the organs were there.

The coroner’s office cited a deposition from a mortuary employee who said the organs were placed in the body cavity and “powdered down with a hardening compound.”

The mortuary denied wrongdoing.

Although Clark County remains a co-defendant, Pro dismissed the coroner’s office from the lawsuit under state legal precedent that says county departments may not be sued.

But the case became convoluted when the county and the cremation society filed complaints against one another. The county alleges that the company “retained, disposed, mishandled, lost and/or otherwise misappropriated” Boorman’s organs.

The cremation society, in denying those allegations, counters that any damages were caused by the county’s own negligence.