A $100 Million Settlement Over Desecrated Graves at Two Menorah Gardens Cemeteries

In 2001, families of people buried at two Menorah Gardens Jewish cemeteries, one in Broward County near Fort Lauderdale and one in Palm Beach County near West Palm Beach, sued Service Corporation International and its Florida funeral subsidiary. SCI was the largest funeral and cemetery company in the world. The civil suit and parallel state investigations alleged that workers had buried people in the wrong plots, broke open concrete vaults to force in additional burials, oversold grave space, and in some instances removed scattered bones from broken vaults and left them in a maintenance yard or in the woods.

The conduct cut against Jewish burial custom, which treats the grave as permanent and the body as something to be left undisturbed. Thousands of families were left unable to be certain that their relatives still rested where they had been laid. One of the individual cases was brought for the family of Air Force Col. Hymen Cohen of Lake Worth, whose remains were dug up and discarded at the Palm Beach County cemetery.

Colson Hicks Eidson joined the plaintiffs' team as co-counsel to the class. Partner Julie Braman Kane managed direct contact with the affected families, who numbered in the thousands across the certified class. The civil litigation moved alongside a criminal case. SCI and its Florida subsidiary were each charged with two third-degree felonies for negligent and incompetent operation of the cemeteries, and a company vice president faced the same charges. Separately, Florida's Attorney General settled a state civil suit for up to $14 million in fines and restitution.

The class action never reached a class trial. On December 2, 2003, after a day of negotiations and with an individual trial about to begin, SCI announced an agreement in principle to pay approximately $100 million to resolve the class action and the related individual lawsuits in Broward County. One Palm Beach County case, Sol Guralnick v. SCI Funeral Services of Florida, was carved out of the deal and left to proceed on its own.

Judge J. Leonard Fleet, who presided over the class action in Broward Circuit Court, reviewed and approved the settlement terms. SCI recorded the cost on its books, recognizing about $77 million in additional litigation expense in the fourth quarter of 2003 on top of roughly $23 million it had already reserved.