Posted on 06/23/2005 10:47:49 AM PDT by robowombat
Decision Over Faulty Casket Upsets Son
"HAWESVILLE, Ky. - Sherrol Sweeney has been dead and buried in the city cemetery at Lewisport, Ky., for nearly four years, but his son, Alan, is still troubled by his father's funeral.
On Aug. 31, 2001, the funeral director and pallbearers were removing his father's casket when something went wrong. Pulling the wooden casket from the hearse, the bottom of the coffin came loose, allowing the departed's torso to drop down. The casket was not entirely out of the hearse. If it hadn't been for that fact, the son said, the father's body would have fallen onto the ground.
David Spear, owner of Taylor Raymond Spear Funeral Home at Lewisport, remembered the incident, too. In a court deposition he said, "I heard a pop. I felt a pain in both of my feet, and I heard a scream." The family filed a lawsuit against the casket manufacturer. At the end of a two-day trial in late May in Hancock Circuit Court at Hawesville, they walked away empty handed when they couldn't meet the requirement of Kentucky law of proving the casket manufacturer intentionally produced a faulty product.
"It's just been eating me alive, how something like this could happen," said Sweeney, 50, a union boilermaker from Tell City, Ind. "This has caused a lot of pain and a lot of problems with family members who had to view this, and what I'm trying to get across to people is that things like this can happen, but don't look forward to it coming out in your favor."
The person the funeral director heard scream was Sweeney's older sister, Suzanne, Sweeney said during a recent discussion of the incident, the litigation and the trial.
The funeral service had been conducted, he said, and the family and mourners had gone to the cemetery. He had been watching pallbearers begin to remove the casket from the hearse, but he turned away to look for other family members when "I heard my older sister scream like somebody had run a knife into her."
"I turned around," Sweeney said, "and seen my father's head land between the feet of David Spear.
"Everybody was in pure disbelief and shock," Sweeney said. "All I could do was look. Finally, they got themselves together enough to raise the bottom up with my father on it and get it back into the hearse."
Spear, who declined to discuss the incident last week, described it this way in his deposition: "I then asked a wonderful bunch of pallbearers to help me. I held the top shell of the casket as they brought the bottom up, and we took it back, almost completely back into the funeral coach."
Sweeney said the funeral director asked family members if they wanted to delay the burial until another day, but because of relatives and friends who had traveled to attend the funeral, they decided to proceed with the burial.
Spear and the pallbearers returned to the funeral home and placed Sweeney's body into a different casket. They then returned to the cemetery and completed the burial.
Sweeney said the incident robbed his family of the usual experience of visiting with friends and family after the funeral and burial.
"It's not being buried with dignity. It took away the whole mood. I don't remember anything about the burial service other than staring at the ground," Sweeney said.
Aurora Casket Co. of Aurora, Ind., which supplied the casket to the Taylor Raymond Spear Funeral Home, replaced the damaged one with a more expensive model. And Spear's funeral home did not charge the family for any of the $6,500 funeral.
Eventually, though, the family - Sweeney's widow, Alan Sweeney and his two brothers and sister - filed a lawsuit for damages against the funeral home, Aurora Casket Co., and Victoriaville Caskets Ltd., a Victoriaville, Canada, company that had manufactured the casket for Aurora.
Represented by Owensboro, Ky., attorney Charles Wible, the lawsuit was styled as a "tort of outrage," for outrageous conduct. In the filing, the lawsuit was described as "not a tort of personal injury in the traditional sense because the heart of the tort involves emotional distress. This tort represents an invasion of the dignity of the plaintiffs."
Neither Wible nor attorneys who represented the two casket companies responded to requests for comments regarding the incident or the trial."
David Spear and the Taylor Raymond Spear Funeral Home petitioned successfully to be dismissed from the litigation.
"We didn't feel like he had any involvement," Sweeney said.
The casket companies offered the family members a settlement of $3,000 each, Sweeney said. They rejected that offer and proposed instead $250,000 for each sibling, for a total of $1 million.
Sweeney's stepmother accepted a settlement offer and dismissed her portion of the litigation.
Sweeney said Wible urged them to settle with the company also, but they chose to proceed to trial.
"They made a big deal in court that we wanted $1 million, but we would have settled for a lot less than that. It really wasn't the money," Sweeney said.
"It's hard for me to come up with the right words about this." he said, "but people need to know it's hard to fight these big companies."
"It's bad enough to have something like that happen, but it's even worse the way the law reads. Since we didn't receive any type of personal injury, we weren't really affected to the point they felt we needed any type of settlement," he said.
"We couldn't prove the company maliciously and intentionally built that casket," he said. Sweeney said people familiar with the case were in "disbelief" the casket companies won the court verdict, "but they (jurors) had no other choice but to do what they did simply because the way the judge laid out the instructions."
Other members of his family have seemed to achieved "some sort of closure," Sweeney said. "But, me, I'm not satisfied."
At least they weren't on the jury.
Sure it's about the money.
When my father in law died the funeral home messed up. He was buried in a town 60 miles from where he lived and died in a family plot. When we got to the site of the burial, there was no canaopy, no chairs, and no sign of any preparation for a burial except a hole in the ground. The herse was there with the driver. The mourners were there, but nothing else. I have never seen my husband so angry. He approached the funeral director who also was the herse diver who at this point had a look of sheer terror on his face. He immediately started apologizing to my husband. Some one at the funeral home had not done their job and called a local funeral home to provide all of the equipment needed for the burial.
So being farm folk, and in true Texan Plains fashion, we improvised. We got tow ropes out of the cars, put blankets and tarps over the dirt mound, his grandsons carried him to his final resting place. We had our services, and we lowered him into the ground. He would have loved it. He didn't take much stock in funerals rituals anyway.
I think the funeral home took $300 off the bill because we hadn't had to rent the burial equipment. 5 years later we buried my mother in law, and my Mom through the same funeral home. We didn't even think of suing.
After all, things happen, and that's life. No one was injured or permanently scared. In a way, it was a healing experience. We put him to rest ourselves like our ancestors did in the frontier days. He was surrounded by family until the very end.
That is an iteresting and inspiring story. I can just imagine the determination and love it must have taken to bury your father-in-law in that manner.
Not only did they get the funeral for free, they got a more expensive casket for free. Although this was an outrageous event, I think that both companies involved tried to make things right. $3000 per sibling was a fair offer, IMHO, since they had no funeral expenses. NOtice that the widow took it.
I seems like a bunch of greedy kids thought they could tap some deep pockets along the way.
You owe me a keyboard.
My ashes will be shot out in a large fireworks shell , so I guess if it's a dud, my fam will be disappointed, but not
sue.
Hmmmm. "Favor" must be a codeword for big-money payout.
You just don't go burying a 400 pounder in a $900 casket.
OK, that was mean. I'm sorry.
This reminds me of when my wife in I were at a funeral home when my father in law died and the director was pointing out caskets for us.
"This one", he said "comes with a lifetime guarantee!"
I couldn't help but laugh. "WHOSE lifetime?" I wanted to know. The director really didn't like me making fun of his "lifetime guaranteed" caskets, but now after reading this story, I will want a guarantee next time.
Guranteed to get them from the hearse to the grave without losing it's cargo!!!
Weired, weired story.
It's a bad thing to happen, and even more horrible to think having bad things happen to you makes you entitled to be enriched by it.
I absolutely would have rejected this suit, and think this family should be ashamed of themselves.
Tort law exists to fix monetary loss that is the fault of someone else. I would propose that "pain and suffering" and "emotional duress" and similar emotional damages be eliminated from the law as a cause of action. They are the leading cause of tort abuse in my opinion.
If this happened to me, I would hope everyone would just double over with laughter! It would be wonderful if I could put one last smile on everyone's face before they put me six feet under!
How curious. I read that you are a native Texan living in New Jersey. I'm a native New Jerseyian living in Texas for the last 30 years. I grew up on a farm in Northern Jersey Route 80 goes right over it. I tell my son I was born in the fast lane. I love Texas. I love her people. They're what makes this state so great. Now you all come back now, ya hear.
Texas is a great place- the land and the people. New Jersey (from what I've seen and who I have met in my 3 years here) is not to bad either.
My family and I will make a trip this next July 4th holiday. After that, we are Jersey bound until our newborn arrives. Our long term plans are up in the air right now, but include the possibility of moving back to Texas or moving farther north to colder climes (we love cold weather but could bear with the Texas heat and the Houston humidity).
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