Funeral home's ash trouble may lead to cash trouble

The Boston Herald ^ | 5/14/2005 | Laurel J. Sweet

[Beckwith]

The Georgia lawyer who won $80 million for victims of the Tri-State Crematory down South - where rotting bodies were found strewn in woods and potting soil was passed off as ashes - is now going after a Quincy funeral home for human atrocities.

In a suit to be filed Wednesday in Norfolk Superior Court, Braintree attorney Mark Gladstone and Robert Smalley of Atlanta, who has agreed to be co-counsel, will charge Hamel, Wickens & Troupe Funeral Home of intentional mishandling of a corpse, negligence and breach of contract on behalf of a widow who believed her beloved husband of 31 years was treated with dignity at the now-defunct Bayview Crematory in Seabrook, N.H.

But now that Bayview has been under fire since February for being unlicensed, letting dead bodies stack up and putting more than one person at a time in its oven.

[Beckwith]

Marion Knudsen is left to wonder who or what exactly she tossed overboard when she buried 63-year-old Robert "Mike" Knudsen's ashes in Boston Harbor in 2001.

"We have no idea whose ashes we cast out to sea and no way of telling." Gladstone said yesterday.

[Fido969]

A whole new area of litigation!

This will be VERY, VERY good news to the hard-pressed finger-in-the-chili crowd.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

The funeral home's ATTORNEY did not return a call.

DIRTBAG