A Long Island, N.Y., surgeon’s bid to seek $1.5 million for the kidney he donated to his estranged wife “not only runs afoul” of public policy, but may expose him to criminal prosecution, a Nassau County, N.Y., court referee ruled Wednesday.
“At its core, the defendant’s claim inappropriately equates human organs with commodities,” Referee A. Jeffrey Grob wrote in Batista v. Batista, Jr., 201931/05. Grob noted that while the term “marital property” is “elastic and expansive … its reach, in this Court’s view, does not stretch into the ether and embrace, in contravention of this State’s public policy, human tissues or organs.”
