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Washington Supreme Court • 2008

Adams v. King County

164 Wash. 2d 640

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Takeaway

In short, an undesignated organ gift could go only to a hospital under the former Act, and unauthorized removal could support common-law relief even though the Act created no civil claim of its own.

Background

Jesse Smith signed an organ donor card offering “any organ” but did not name a recipient. After his unexpected death, a pathologist at the King County Medical Examiner’s office asked his mother, Nancy Adams, for permission to take brain tissue for research by the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI). Adams said she agreed to a sample, not the entire brain. The medical examiner retained Jesse’s whole brain and sent it to SMRI, along with other samples.

Adams sued the medical examiner and SMRI after learning what had been taken. The trial court granted summary judgment dismissing all her claims. The Washington Supreme Court reviewed that dismissal.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Jesse’s donor card authorized SMRI to accept his organs when he had not designated a recipient.

Holding

No. Under the former Washington Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, only a hospital could accept an undesignated anatomical gift.

Reasoning

The Act listed several kinds of eligible recipients for anatomical gifts, but its separate provision on gifts without a designated recipient named only hospitals. By specifying hospitals there, the legislature excluded the other eligible recipients from accepting undesignated gifts.

Jesse’s card offered any organ without naming a recipient, and SMRI was not a hospital. Directing such gifts to hospitals also fit the Act’s emphasis on making organs available for transplantation.

Jesse’s mother could have made a further gift to SMRI after his death. But whether she consented to removal of the entire brain and the other samples, rather than a limited tissue sample, was a disputed fact that could not be resolved on summary judgment.

Issue #2

Whether Adams could seek relief for an unauthorized removal despite the Act’s lack of an express civil remedy.

Holding

The Act supplied no implied cause of action, but Adams’s common-law claims for willful interference with a dead body and conspiracy could proceed.

Reasoning

An implied statutory remedy would not fit the Act’s purpose of increasing anatomical gifts. The Act did not grant families a special right requiring a new remedy; their interest in the proper treatment of a deceased relative already had common-law protection. The Act’s good-faith immunity provision further weighed against implying statutory liability.

Washington common law permits relatives to recover for mental suffering caused by willful misuse of a body. Taking and retaining Jesse’s entire brain for research without authorization could qualify. Adams still had to prove the tort’s elements at trial.

Although an agreement to obtain tissue for research was lawful in itself, Adams’s allegation that the respondents agreed to obtain Jesse’s brain without consent raised a factual question on her conspiracy claim.

The court affirmed dismissal of Adams’s other claims. Her privacy claim alleged no publication of private information, and her fraud claim rested on an alleged promise to take only a sample, not a misrepresentation of an existing fact.