The court found that Moore had no property rights to his discarded cells or to any profits made from them. However, the research physician did have an obligation to reveal his financial interest in the materials that were harvested from Moore, who could thus bring a claim for any injury that he sustained by the physician's failure to disclose his interests. The court's majority opinion, written by Justice
Panelli, was joined by three other justices. The opinion first looked at Moore's claim of property interests under existing law. The court first rejected the argument that a person has an absolute right to the products of their body, as his products were not unique. The court argued that the cells were "no more unique to Moore than the number of vertebrae in the spine or the
chemical formula of
hemoglobin". The court then rejected the argument that Moore's spleen should be protected as property to protect his privacy and dignity. The court held that his interests were already protected by informed consent and decided that, since laws required the destruction of human organs as some indication, the legislature had intended to prevent patients from possessing their extracted organs. Finally, the property at issue may not have been Moore's cells but the cell line created from his cells. The court then looked at the policy behind potentially considering Moore's cell line
property. Because
conversion of property is a
strict liability tort, the court feared that extending property rights to include organs would have a
chilling effect on
medical research. Laboratories doing research receive a large volume of medical samples and cannot be expected to know or discover whether somewhere down the line their samples were illegally converted. Furthermore, Moore's interest in his bodily integrity and privacy are protected by the requirement of informed consent, which must also inform about economic interests. Justice
Arabian wrote a concurring opinion, stating that the philosophical, moral and religious issues presented by the case could not be decided by the court. He also argued that Moore's position would force the court to recognize a right to profit by selling one's own body tissue. Justice
Broussard concurred in part and dissented in part. Justice
Mosk dissented, countering with respect to the argument that finding for Moore would mean that he would have to have been given the right to sell his tissue for profit that he could instead have been given some property rights but denied others. To do so, he noted several situations in which limits on the transfer of property are uncontroversial: for example, the property of a bankrupt individual may be sold but not given away, while a medical license or prescription drugs may be neither sold nor given away, despite all being property. At the very least, Mosk argued, Moore had the "right to do with his own tissue what the defendants did with it". That is, as soon as the tissue was removed, Moore had at least the right to choose to sell it to a laboratory or to have it destroyed. Thus, there would be no necessity to hold labs strictly liable for conversion when property rights could be broken up to allow Moore to extract a significant portion of the economic value created by his tissue. Furthermore, Moore would have to prove that had he been properly informed, neither he nor a
reasonable person would have consented to the procedure in order to prove damages from a lack of informed consent. Thus, Moore's chances of proving damages through informed consent were slim. Also, Moore could not consent to the procedure but reserve the right to sell his organs. Finally, Moore could sue only his doctor for failing to adequately inform him due to the narrow
doctor-patient relationship. Thus, under the majority's theory, Moore was unlikely to win, could not extract the economic value of his tissue even had he refused consent, and could not sue the parties that might be exploiting him. ==Aftermath==