Bereaved Families File Suit Against Metairie Cemetery Plots They Purchased Not Ready On Time
Submitted by N.O.V.A. July 2005
Times Picayune 	02-16-1998


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Three years before his death in 1994, Mike Parrino did what a billboard outside the
entrance of the Garden of Memories cemetery advises: "The right time to plan is now."

Parrino arranged his funeral and bought a plot in the Metairie cemetery. However, his
efforts to ease his family's pain became four years of heartache when his final resting
place in the cemetery's Garden of Gethsemane section wasn't ready when he died.

The cemetery gave the family two options: spend more money for a new plot or keep the
family patriarch's remains in a temporary crypt until the land was ready.

The Parrinos took the latter option, and for four years they have had to crane their
necks to read their loved one's name written on a temporary plaque on the fourth tier
of a mausoleum wall.

"The vault was very impersonal," Michael Parrino Jr. said. "We had to lay the flowers
down on cement.'

On Tuesday, the day that would have been Mike Parrino's 80th birthday, his remains were
moved from the temporary crypt to the land he'd bought seven years ago. His were the
first remains, of about 30 being stored in the crypt until plots are completed, to be
moved.

"It was kind of cold," Michael Parrino Jr. said of the makeshift ceremony with
construction workers working nearby, "but at least they had the decency to turn off the
bulldozers.

"It's been a long time coming; waiting has been hard on all of us, especially my
mother."

The surviving Parrinos are part of a group of more than 70 plaintiffs suing the
cemetery's current and former owners for failing to have lawn crypts and mausoleum
spots ready within five years of purchase, as required by state law.

The plaintiffs are seeking different remedies: Some want the money they prepaid
returned so they can find another cemetery; others are seeking monetary damages.

Peter Connick and William Hamlin, attorneys for the cemetery's owner, Loewen Group
International of Canada, dispute claims that the company didn't fulfill its contract.

The families should have known temporary interment was a possibility when they bought
the crypts because the plots were sold before development, the attorneys said. The
arrangement, known as "preconstruction," carries the risk of temporary interment, but
it can also save as much as 40 percent on the price of burials, which can cost
thousands of dollars.

However, in cases such as the Parrinos', the five-year time period ended in 1996. Why
then, they ask, did they have to wait two more years before their plot was ready?

The lawsuit, filed in December 1996, is only now reaching the discovery phase in Judge
Marion Edwards' courtroom in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna.

The delay can be partially blamed on changes in judges and lawyers, said Edmund Schmidt
III, an attorney for the plaintiffs. Legal wrangling over whether the suit should be
classified as a class action also delayed the process, he said. Edwards ruled against
the plaintiffs' request for class-action certification.

The plaintiffs say they've waited long enough. Schmidt said the delays have been
horrible for him and his clients.

"They call me all the time - an anniversary will occur or the deceased's birthday - and
they can't go out to the cemetery," Schmidt said.

In cases such as the Parrinos', "they have to go through the anguish of losing their
spouse or father or mother again," Schmidt said. "It's been a tough experience."

River Ridge resident Howard Bennett had a similar experience when his parents were
placed in temporary vaults last year.

"The street was all dirty and there were mounds of mud we had to walk across," Bennett
said. "I asked them to clean it up, but they didn't. . . . It wasn't as nice as it
should have been for that kind of situation."

His parents chose Garden of Memories because his mother wanted to spend eternity near
her own parents in the Jeffersonian Mausoleum, Bennett said. The couple bought a double
crypt on the uncompleted second floor of the building in October 1992.

However, when Bennett's parents died within seven months of each other in 1997, there
was no double crypt ready. In fact, Bennett said, the cemetery has told him it does not
plan to build the addition and has offered to move his parents' remains to another,
unfinished section of the cemetery.

For now, their remains are in temporary vaults.

"They're not even together," Bennett said. "It's really a sad situation."