A two-month long investigation of the sales practices of New York City funeral homes finds may of them are playing fast and loose with city regulations. Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Commissioner Jonathan Mintz says the inspections of 579 funeral home resulted in 87 businesses being charged with a total of 275 violations. That works [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Bereaved Consumers Protection Act’
18 Mar
New “Green” Laws Raise Price of Cremation in UK, Could US Be Next?
NEW “green” laws look set to push up the cost of a cremation in Scarborough to more than £500. The extra cost is needed to deal with the environmental pollution caused when a body is cremated, according to a new report. Scarborough Council bosses want to introduce the £50 charge for all adult cremations at [...]
23 Dec
Caskets: Everything the Mortician Won’t Tell You, Really?
I understand why there is a consumer funeral alliance and a need for one but, I think sometimes they can make something out of nothing. No, the cheapest caskets are not always the ones that are displayed to most prominent. When you go to Sears does the salesman direct you to the cheapest freezer first? [...]
30 Nov
Family Sues After Body Falls Out of Casket
Robert Gowdy may have died May 2, 2008, but memory of his burial lives on. While the Mesa native’s passing from congestive heart failure surely came as a shock to his family, it’s his graveside burial at a city cemetery that has sparked a lawsuit against the city, Preston Funeral Home and two other parties [...]
5 Nov
Smugglers In Iraq Have A New Trade: Corpses
Iraqi and U.S. officials have expressed concerns about the traffic of weapons and drugs across the country’s porous borders, but there is also an older and more surprising commodity being smuggled into Iraq — cadavers. For centuries, Shiite Muslims from all over the world have sought to be buried in what might be the world’s [...]
9 Oct
SCI Funeral Director Charged With Corpse Abuse
HOUSTON (KTRK) — A former funeral director is accused of a deeply disturbing crime. The district attorney says authorities uncovered shocking photos of him and a dead body. While the pictures were allegedly taken several years before James Patton started working at Earthman Funeral Home, this latest incident of alleged corpse abuse may have happened [...]
29 Sep
Compost in the Sky: Eco-Friendly Burials Trend Include Liquid Nitrogen, Pine Boxes
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. If it were that simple, then funeral parlors wouldn’t have so much work to do. There is a lot involved preparing a loved one for their final resting place. With a world population closing in on 7 billion, that means there could be around 7 billion dead in the [...]
24 Sep
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush Unveils The Bereaved Consumers Protection Act
U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush unveiled legislation today that would expand the powers of the federal government by creating a new level of oversight for cemeteries to prevent the kind of abuses seen at Burr Oak Cemetery and to others. The Bereaved Consumers Protection Act would force cemetery directors to bolster their record keeping and make [...]
