Philadelphia City Hall. Photo: Fotolia.

A Philadelphia judge has ruled that the family of Ellen Greenberg, a teacher who was found dead with 20 stab wounds, can move forward with a lawsuit against the city Medical Examiner's Office to remove from the record suicide as her official cause of death.

Greenberg's body was discovered by her fiance in their Manayunk apartment in 2011. She was 27 years old. The coroner originally listed her cause of death as a homicide, but subsequently switched it to suicide without explanation.

Her parents, Joshua and Sandra Greenberg, who independently investigated their daughter's death over the course of years, disputed the ruling and sued the city to have it changed to "could not be determined." The controversy surrounding Ellen Greenberg's cause of death was first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer in March.

The city objected to the family's lawsuit, but a Philadelphia judge overruled those objections Jan. 7, paving the way for the case to continue.

"In a precedent-setting decision, we are grateful that Judge Paula Patrick ruled that both of our claims in equity may proceed and that Ellen finally may have justice and her day in court," said the family's lawyer, Joseph Podraza of Lamb McErlane. "It has taken nearly nine years for this to happen, but we believe justice for Ellen is finally within our grasps."

The city declined to comment on the ruling.

The family's complaint said that Greenberg had multiple stab wounds of varying depth on the back of her neck as well as her chest and back.

"The medical evidence indicates that not all of these wounds could have possibly been self-inflicted," the complaint said. "Moreover, this evidence strongly establishes a knife other than the one recovered at the scene was used to inflict many of Ellen's 20 separate stab wounds. Other information, some just recently obtained, firmly draws into doubt—if not forcefully rebuts—a finding of suicide."

It continued, "Unsurprisingly, after thorough autopsy and toxicology examinations, defendants initially ruled Ellen Greenberg's death was a homicide. Later, and only after the Philadelphia Police Department had begun to publicly contradict the defendants' medical findings, the defendants inexplicably changed the manner of her death from homicide to suicide without explanation, and without any compelling reasons or sufficient medical support for this reversal."

The city argued in its preliminary objections that medical examiner Marlon Osbourne had the discretion to determine the cause of Greenberg's death.

"There is no requirement that the medical examiner convince members of the public of the accuracy of their findings," the city's court papers said. "There is no requirement that the medical examiner accept or revise his conclusion as a result of reviewing the opinions of other forensic professionals."