Alternative Funeral Monitor

Judge sanctions Eden Memorial owner over evidence tampering | Community | Jewish Journal

[...As cemeteries lose income during the rush to cremation, more and more of them will cut corners in order to maximize revenues (and eventually minimize losses). The cemetery-side of the story is that the costs of upkeep outweigh the money allocated for maintenance. A natural burial lowers long-term maintenance costs and makes grave reclamation and reuse possible, a practice common in Europe today...AFM editor]

Read Original Article here -- Judge sanctions Eden Memorial owner over evidence tampering

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax

A Los Angeles judge has sanctioned Service Corporation International (SCI), owner of Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, after finding that the cemetery intentionally tampered with and destroyed evidence related to a class action lawsuit alleging that Eden mishandled human remains.

Judge Anthony J. Mohr of the Los Angeles Superior Court ordered that the plaintiff’s attorney will be allowed to present evidence to the jury showing that SCI willfully tampered with evidence, and the judge will inform jurors that they may reasonably conclude that the destroyed evidence could have been damaging.

LA County coroner sells own line of merchandise - Washington Times

LA County coroner sells own line of merchandise - Washington Times.

By Christina Hoag-Associated Press

LOS ANGELES | The morgue is about the last place you would think of to go shopping, so it's perhaps unsurprising that sales at Los Angeles County's coroner gift store are next to dead.

Tucked as unobtrusively as possible in a closed-door room off the coroner's lobby, the store is jam-packed with mortality-mocking merchandise: Water bottles marked "bodily fluids," boxer shorts dubbed "undertakers," toe tags, crime-scene tape and beach towels bearing the county coroner's trademarked symbol of a body outline.

Trouble is, few people know about the tongue-in-cheek store and its related website, Skeletons in a Closet (www.lacoroner.com/). The shop's biggest customers? No shock here -- homicide detectives.

"Most people know it through word of mouth," said Craig Harvey, the department's chief of operations. "But we are mentioned in guidebooks and we get tourists."