$300,000 awarded to family for casket mishap

INDIANAPOLIS – A jury found a Greenwood cemetery negligent and awarded $300,000 to four members of a family after a relative’s casket broke apart as workers removed it from a vault.

When William Joseph Henry died in March 2002, a mausoleum chosen by his family was still being built. Seventeen months later, in August 2003, family members gathered to watch workers move the cherry wood casket from its temporary vault.
The body had decomposed, and the casket’s handles broke off the casket, sending it to the ground.

Linda Anderson-Hardwick, 57, said the money would mean little if another family ever had to endure the same shock.

“It’s been horrific,” she said. “Now, maybe my brother can rest.”

Jim Young, an Indianapolis attorney who represented Henry’s son, Christopher, said cemetery employees violated the cemetery’s policies by not using a tray to guide the casket out of the vault or covering it with a sheet.

After the verdicts were read Wednesday in Marion County Superior Court, the family received an apology from Ronald Robertson, a vice president of Memory Gardens Management Corp., Forest Lawn’s owner.

The current owners bought the cemetery after the casket incident.

Memory Gardens was placed in receivership this year after Marion County prosecutors accused the current owners of raiding the trusts of Forest Lawn and other cemeteries. That case still is pending in court.