Human remains delivered to a North Dakota medical waste facility are part of a tangled litigation involving a regional health system and the disposal company
BISMARCK, ND — Human remains are at the center of a tangled litigation involving a major regional health system and the company hired to dispose of its medical waste.
Monarch Waste Technologies has sued Sanford Health and the healthcare system’s medical waste delivery subsidiary, Healthcare Environmental Services, alleging that the latter “brazenly” deposited a human torso hidden in a plastic container at Monarch’s facility in March. Monarch discovered the remains four days later after an employee “noticed a rotten, putrid smell,” according to the company’s complaint.
Monarch discarded the remains and notified the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, which is investigating. A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment during an active investigation.
The Texas-based company also claims that an employee of the Sanford Health subsidiary deliberately placed and then took photos of disorganized waste to suggest that Monarch had mishandled medical waste, part of a scheme that would allow the subsidiary to terminate his contract with the establishment.
“Put simply, this relationship has gone from a mutually beneficial and environmentally friendly solution for medical waste disposal, and a potentially positive business relationship, to a television movie complete with decomposing human remains and staged photographs,” Monarch’s complaint states. .
In its response, Sanford Health said the body part was “clearly labeled” as “human tissue for research” and “was the type of routine biological material inherent in a medical and educational facility like Sanford that Monarch has guaranteed that it would be safely and quickly disposed of).”
Sanford described the body part as “a partial lower body research specimen used for resident education in hip replacement procedures.” A Sanford spokesperson described the remains as “the hip and thigh area” when asked for details by The Associated Press.
Monarch CEO and co-founder David Cardenas said in an interview that the remains were the torso of a man.
“You can clearly see it’s a torso” in photos taken by Monarch when it discovered the remains, Cardenas said.
He cited a state law that requires bodies to be buried or cremated after being dissected. He also attributed the situation to a “lack of training of people at the hospital level” who deal with waste and related documentation.
Cardenas did not specify where the body part came from, but he said the manifesto given to Monarch and attached to the remains indicated that the location was not a university hospital.
“It’s so far from a university hospital, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
It is not known what happened to the remains. Monarch’s complaint states that the body part “simply disappeared at some point.”
Lawyers for Sanford Health say Healthcare Environmental Services, which is challenging Monarch and Cardenas, “never removed any body parts” from Monarch’s facility, and that Monarch “must have disposed of them.”
Sanford’s spokesperson told the AP that “the specimen was in the possession of Monarch when they locked Sanford out of their facility.”
“All references to a mishandled or missing ‘torso’ are deeply inaccurate and deliberately misleading,” Sanford said in a statement.
Sanford said Monarch’s lawsuit “is simply retaliation” for terminating its contract with the health system subsidiary “and a desperate attempt by Monarch to distract from its own failures.”
Cardenas said he would like there to be “some closure” for the deceased person to whom the remains belonged.
“I believe that everything God created should be treated with dignity, and I just feel like no one is asking, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” he said.