Suit involving funeral home's handling of body dismissed

YOUNGSTOWN

A civil lawsuit alleging negligence by a funeral home and a body-transport service and its driver has been dismissed by the plaintiffs.

The case involved exhumation and expert examination of a corpse that had been buried for nearly six years.

Through their lawyer, William Paul McGuire of Warren, the plaintiffs, Mary Jane Patton of Youngstown, and Lilly Mae Curtis of Greenville, Pa., dismissed their lawsuit against Shriver-Allison-Courtley-Weller-King Funeral Home of Youngstown, Funeral Home Services Corp. of Boardman, and its driver, Bryan M. Lozano, of Boardman.

The notice, filed Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, did not give any reason for dismissing the complaint, which was filed in 2011, but said the plaintiffs have the right to re-file it within a year.

Patton and Curtis alleged that the body of their mother, Rose White, of Youngstown, who died at age 93 on July 24, 2008, was damaged in transit from the Cleveland Clinic, where she died, to the funeral home, and that the funeral home improperly prepared her body for her funeral and burial because black stitching was visible around her eyes and mouth.

Read more about the case in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.