PORTLAND (AP) – A judge has ruled that a Portland man can have a jury decide whether his late wife’s brain was taken for medical research without proper consent.

James Allen’s wife died in a swimming pool accident in 2001. He filed a lawsuit after learning that her brain had been sent from Maine’s state morgue to the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md.

In the suit, Allen says he agreed to donate some brain tissue, but not the entire brain, for medical research.

The defendants, including the research institute, have maintained that they did nothing wrong and asked Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills to rule in their favor before the case went to trial.

But Mills ruled this month that several factual disputes remain that a jury should decide.

Allen’s attorney, Craig Rancourt, told the Portland Press Herald that the decision is a victory for his client and more than a dozen other plaintiffs who have filed similar lawsuits.

“This has given us the green light to go forward and tell a Maine jury exactly what happened here,” said Rancourt. “This really sets the standard for the cases in the state of Maine.”

In her ruling June 8, Mills ruled in the defendants’ favor on two of eight counts.

But she also said a jury should decide other questions in the case.

Those questions include whether Stanley Medical changed its financial agreement with Matthew Cyr to encourage him to collect more brains and whether Cyr used the term “brain tissue” rather than “brain” when asking for donations. Cyr is a former state funeral director who was paid to collect brains for research.

The judge also said that a jury should decide whether the research lab “failed to oversee or supervise Mr. Cyr’s consent taking procedures” and whether it hired Cyr despite knowing he failed to follow organ donation procedures at a prior job.

Getting answers to those and other questions could help a jury decide whether the defendants acted in good faith. Maine’s organ- and tissue-donation law shields individuals and organizations that seek such donations from liability as long as they act in good faith.

Lawyers for the defendants did not return calls to the newspaper seeking comment Monday.

More than a dozen families have filed civil lawsuits alleging that the brains of their loved ones were removed by the Medical Examiner’s Office without their consent.

State and federal prosecutors this year completed an investigation into brain harvesting activities within the state Medical Examiner’s Office and determined that no criminal charges were warranted.

The probe centered on the collection of at least 99 brains from deceased Mainers that were shipped to the Stanley Medical between 1999 and 2003.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-06-19-07 0838EDT