Damages for mistreated body

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 6

Damages for mistreated body

NZPA-AP St Petersburg A widow and her family were awarded $U5240,000 ($NZ370,000) in a Florida lawsuit against a funeral home and cemetery after the body of her husband, aged 73, fell out of his coffin before the funeral.

During a five-day trial, Mrs Pebble Knight, aged 77, testified that the coffin broke and the body of her husband, Elias, tumbled out, and that later she saw insects crawling on his face. “We thought it was an outrageous thing to have a man fall out of a casket,” said Mr Ronald Encardo, one of the six jurors. A lawyer for the Eternal Light Funeral Home, now known as All Faiths Memorial Park, said he planned to appeal against the verdict.

“The main thing is that the funeral home has been held accountable,” said the St Petersburg fire chief, Mr Jerry Knight, son of Mr Elias Knight. “That was my

purpose.” For five days the Knights

presented their complaints about the way Eternal Light had handled the burial in October, 1980. They said that mourners who had visited the funeral home were harassed by an employee trying to sell them grave sites. The next morning, when the hearse was late to the funeral service, the general manager asked if ne could have the body picked up in the family’s station wagon. When the hearse finally arrived, the bottom of the coffin fell on to the footpath in the parking lot and Mr Knight’s body tumbled out. During the service, the family had to watch insects crawl on the dead man’s face, they said. A short time later the Knights had the body removed and buried in another cemetery. Mr Shelton Philips, lawyer for the funeral home, said the case was exaggerated and unfair.

“Nobody is perfect,” he told the jury.