The Anniston Star (AL)
MORTUARY LOSES DESECRATION RULING APPEAL
Date: January 16, 1999
Article written by: Jenny Cromie
The Alabama Supreme Court upheld a $2 million judgment against
Gray Brown-Service Mortuary on Friday, stemming from a lawsuit
accusing the funeral home of desecrating an Anniston woman’s
body.
The funeral home appealed the November 1997 verdict last summer,
asking the state’s high court to reduce the amount of damages
awarded to Fred Patrick Lloyd Jr., the husband of the late
Lillian Faye Lloyd.
Lloyd filed the case in 1996 after learning funeral home
employees secretly opened his wife’s crypt because of complaints
about odor at the Forestlawn Mausoleum. Gray Brown personnel
twice opened her leaking casket and covered her remains with a
drying agent.
On Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Lloyd’s favor.
“Suffice it to say there was ample evidence to support the
jury’s award, based on the undignified and disrespectful manner
in which Gray Brown-Service treated the remains of Faye Lloyd,”
Justice Mark Kennedy wrote in the ruling.
Chief Justice Perry Hooper Sr., who cast the only dissenting
vote, called the $2 million judgment “grossly excessive.”
“I’m very surprised they didn’t cut it, that they didn’t reduce
it,” Arthur Fite, the funeral home’s attorney, said Friday. “All
we asked the court to do was to reduce the award. We thought the
award was too high.”
A Calhoun County jury awarded the Lloyd family the $2 million
verdict for mental anguish caused by the incident. Fite said
there was no financial loss involved in the matter.
The Anniston attorney said Friday that he had not yet seen the
court’s ruling on the case.
Fite said Gray Brown-Service likely will request a rehearing
before the state Supreme Court within the next 14 days.
Gray Brown-Service officials could not be reached for comment
Friday night.
Lloyd said he was relieved to hear about the Supreme Court’s
decision.
The Anniston man said he filed the suit to make public what the
funeral home had done to his wife.
“It still bothers me a lot; it bothers me all the time,” he
said.
Lloyd’s wife died in 1991, and he had her entombed in Forestlawn
Mausoleum. After her entombment, Mrs. Lloyd’s casket began to
leak, and area residents began to complain about the odor.
In June 1993, employees of Gray Brown-Service opened Mrs.
Lloyd’s casket with a hacksaw and crowbar and poured a drying
agent over her body, according to court documents. In the
process, funeral home employees damaged the $3,000 copper casket
and were unable to reseal it.
Two months later, following more complaints about the odor,
funeral home employees removed Mrs. Lloyd’s body from the
casket, placed it in a body bag, poured more drying agent on it
and placed the body in another casket. They buried the original
casket, which still included some of her remains, according to
testimony during the 1997 trial.
Lloyd said he did not learn about what happened to his wife’s
casket and remains until a year after the two incidents.
At the time of the trial in Calhoun County Circuit Court, Gray
Brown-Service employees contended they did not notify the family
because they did not want to further upset them.
Lloyd said now that the case appears nearing a resolution, he
likely will have someone remove his wife’s body from the
mortuary and bury her someplace else.
“But I’m worried she might not even be in there,” he said.
[Keith Belt was trial and appellate counsel along with Ken
Hooks]
