PORTLAND, (AP) – Two more lawsuits have been filed over the practices of a Maryland research laboratory that collected at least 99 brains for research from the state morgue.

A South Portland mother and a couple from Milo were the latest people to allege that brains were taken from deceased relatives without proper permission.

Steven Silin, a Lewiston lawyer who filed the lawsuits, said there is a pattern of similar allegations against the Stanley Medical Research Institute that bolsters the credibility of each family’s claim.

“This isn’t just one person’s word,” he said.

Thomas Laprade, a Portland attorney who represents the Stanley Institute, said he’s eager to go to trial. “We expect to be fully vindicated,” Laprade said.

All told, 13 lawsuits have been filed in Maine against the Stanley Institute, the laboratory’s founder and a Bucksport man who was paid more than $150,000 to collect the brains. All have denied wrongdoing.

Most of the lawsuits revolve around phone calls placed to families in the hours after their loved ones died. The caller, Matthew Cyr of Bucksport, was paid $1,000 to $2,000 for each brain he sent to the lab.

Some of the families allege that they were asked to donate only a sample of brain tissue, not the entire brain, and others say they never even spoke to Cyr.

The Stanley Institute, which needs brains for its studies into the roots of severe mental illnesses, has offered to return brains to Maine families. It is not yet known whether any of the affected families will take the Stanley Institute up on its offer.