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Lawsuit against Youngstown funeral home 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 the 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.
Atty. McGuire declined to comment on the reasons for the dismissal. David Courtley, funeral home owner, also declined to comment on the dismissal.
Kurt Weitendorf, the funeral home’s lawyer, said, however, the voluntary dismissal surprised him. “My client still feels that they did nothing wrong,” Weitendorf added.
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.
On March 4, 2014, then-Mahoning County Probate Judge Mark Belinky approved exhumation of White’s body from Lake Park Cemetery in Boardman for expert examination. The disinterment occurred July 14.
In a report requested by Weitendorf, Akron funeral director and embalmer Charles M. Billow, who examined the exhumed corpse, said he saw no stitching of White’s eyes and mouth.
Billow concluded White had been properly embalmed and prepared for her funeral and burial by a competent embalmer.
In his order, then-Judge Belinky ruled that Patton and Curtis had to pay the cemetery’s $2,400 disinterment and re-interment charge and the additional cost of vault removal.