Police in Allendale, South Carolina have taken the extraordinary action of exhuming the body of Minister James Hines to see if he was buried with his legs attached. A former employee of Cave Funeral Services claimed that the funeral home cut off the legs of the 6-foot, 5-inch man to fit into a coffin despite telling his widow that they had a perfect fit.
A former employee said that the funeral home did not want to pay the added expense of a new coffin so decided to trim the corpse instead.
Allendale County Coroner Hayzen Black has told the press that it found a fair amount of “undesirable evidence” and turned the case over to the police. Of course, any exhumation produces what a normal person would call “undesirable evidence” but it is assumed that he means incriminating evidence. Appropriately, Hines was a minister at Revelations Ministries.
The widow would have a strong torts claims as well as a criminal claim in such a case. The mishandling of a corpse has long been recognized as a tort under the common law and often subject to punitive damages.
Yes you have really interesting post. This kind of incident is rarely occurred.
If the legs were severed, the funeral home should pay dearly. The actions of severing the legs would be a severe abuse of the trust given to them by the family. I would think punitive damages would be likely and fair.
Long ago a writer named H.P. Lovecraft wrote a story about this:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/inthevault.htm
Ok, I thought the cop holding up the family @ the hospital was wrong, but this is even more wrong. Funeral homes are no different than any other business. They want to make money and spend little to nothing. And at times like these, the families are not clearly thinking, so they take advantage (some do anyway) and this was it. I hope they all rot in the hot spot for this.
If the legs were slashed,
Defendant’s trashed.
The settlement check’s
as good as cashed.