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Andrew Bergh
Andrew Bergh

July 20, 2000

Funeral home sued over missing parts

By ANDREW BERGH
Special to the Journal

I’ve grown attached to my internal organs. So much so that it would be hard to function without them.

Maybe that’s why they’re called “vital” parts.

But once you kick the bucket, it’s a whole new ball game. Forget how well they worked when you were still pumping air, internal organs like kidneys, spleens and livers – yes, even brains – are only so much dead weight once you cash in your chips.

So what difference could it possibly make if you got buried without all your parts? Be perfectly honest. Would you miss them at all during your eternal sleep?

But wait a minute.

Maybe I’m being too self-centered. Maybe your next of kin should have some say. Because if your loved ones will be visiting your grave, and if they would find extra peace from the fact you were buried intact, then maybe their feelings should be considered too. (You want a steady flow of fresh flowers, don’t you?)

Sorry if this topic is a bit morbid. But when I stumbled onto Shepard v. Johnson the other day, I was appropriately inspired. In that case, a Mississippi court had to decide whether a funeral home should pay damages for not telling a customer that her son’s body was buried without its internal organs.

The Case of the Missing Body Parts dates back almost nine years to Sept. 29, 1991.

That’s when Rodney Stowers suffered catastrophic injuries while playing a high school football game. Sadly, although taken to the hospital right away, the Scott County youth died only four days later.

Stowers’ mother, Delie Shepard, was the one who suffered a parent’s worst nightmare.

Following her son’s death, Shepard signed an authorization letting the hospital perform an autopsy on his body. According to the fine print, certain tissues and specimens could be removed and retained if deemed necessary by the examining doctor.

I don’t know any results or findings from the autopsy (or why it was even conducted). I do know, though, that once it was done, the hospital released Stowers’ body – sans internal organs – to the Holifield Funeral Home.

After receiving the body, Eddie Johnson, the owner of the funeral home, embalmed and buried it as requested by Shepard. One thing he didn’t do, however, was tell mom before the fact that her son’s body had been buried without its vital parts.

Things were pretty quiet the next eight months.

But in May 1992, Stowers’ body was exhumed for a second autopsy. It was following this exhumation that Shepard first learned that her son’s body had been buried without its internal organs.

Unfortunately, this didn’t sit too well with Shepard. After stewing about 16 months, she eventually sued Johnson for damages in Scott County Circuit Court. The gist of her claim? That the funeral home operator wasn’t specifically authorized to bury her son’s body without its internal organs, and that Johnson had negligently failed to inform her before the burial occurred that Stowers’ vital parts were missing.

The wheels of justice apparently grind slowly in this part of the Deep South. Almost five and a half years later – in May 1998 to be exact – Johnson moved to dismiss the mother’s claims. And after the trial judge sided with the funeral home, Shepard found herself on the wrong side of an appeal.

In legal jargon, the primary issue was whether Johnson owed any duty to tell Shepard that her son’s body was buried without its internal organs.

And in June of this year, Mississippi’s highest court finally spoke.

I’ll spare any drum roll and get right to the point: Mom lost.

By a 9-0 margin, the court noted that under Mississippi law, a doctor performing an autopsy – absent a written request – can dispose of human tissue by cremation, incineration or burial. In the dark about this law, Shepard had instead assumed her son’s organs would be returned following the first autopsy.

In short, Shepard perhaps had a legitimate gripe against the doctor and/or the hospital for not fully advising her about her rights.

But that was neither here nor there, said the court, as far as the funeral home was concerned.

Johnson had played no role in the autopsy. He never had any control over the internal organs. And he never made any misleading statements to Shepard about their whereabouts. So in light of all these circumstances, the court ultimately agreed the funeral home was off the hook.

That, of course, won’t make Shepard very happy.

But after almost nine years of grieving, maybe the court’s ruling will finally impose some closure on the whole tragic affair.


Seattle lawyer Andrew Bergh, a former prosecutor and insurance defense attorney, now limits his practice to plaintiff's personal injury cases. He fields questions via email at andy@berghlaw.com.


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