Hamilton County in Ohio has agreed to a settlement of $ 6 million with Debra Singler who had sued the county for removing her dead father's brain without informing the family. When Singler read the autopsy report, she realized that she had buried her father without his brain, which was kept to determine what had killed him.
The lawsuit later included about 960 people whose relatives had body parts removed without permission at the Hamilton County morgue.
Previously, a $5 million settlement had been paid to Cincinnati attorney John Metz, for a lawsuit accusing then-Hamilton County Coroner Frank Cleveland of improperly harvesting corneas from bodies at the morgue.
In Singler's case, the settlement also includes an agreement that the coroner's office can no longer take body parts without permission, and families must be given the option of having the body part returned after the cause of death has been determined.
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