REDWOOD CITY -- A New York couple have refiled for the third time their lawsuit which claims San Mateo County's coroner broke the law when he let an ambulance company take samples of their dead son's brain.

Jerald and Sandra Wolkoff's suit, filed Tuesday in San Mateo County Superior Court, alleges state rules require officials to get permission to turn over body parts to investigators in certain circumstances. The Wolkoffs say they never gave their OK for Coroner Robert Foucrault to give some of their son Steven Wolkoff's brain stem to American Medical Response.

Although judges have dismissed the three previous iterations of the Wolkoffs' lawsuit, each time they also allowed the family to file a revised complaint.

Steven Wolkoff died after a July 21, 2008, car crash on Highway 1 near Green Oaks Way. 

His parents alleged, in a separate 2009 suit, that American Medical Response workers made medical errors that led to their son's death. The company got Wolkoff's brain tissue in preparation for its defense against the wrongful death case, which has since been settled for an undisclosed sum, attorneys said.

San Mateo County's attorney John Beiers said the Wolkoff's case against the coroner has already been thrown out three times and that a fourth filing is a "colossal waste of public resources." He added Foucrault didn't do anything wrong and there's no legal basis for yet another suit.

"Apparently they don't take no for an answer," said Beiers. "Everything that's in their complaint has already been (thrown out)."  

Foucrault has been accused previously of mishandling the remains of the dead. Isolina Picon sued the coroner in 2007 after learning his office had retained her son's heart. Picon's suit was later dismissed.

The Wolkoffs' attorney Steve Brewer said his clients, who are devout Jews, were horrified to find out they had buried their son without all of his body parts and that his brain had been dissected. Judaism considers dissection, except for urgent reasons, a matter of "shame and gross dishonor," the complaint says.

Brewer said he hopes the judges have given his client three chances to refile because they see some validity in their complaint."We're kind of dancing with the judge," said Brewer. "We're trying to find the language he would find acceptable to let us pursue this."

Contact Joshua Melvin at 650-348-4335. Follow him at Twitter.com/melvinreport.