12/20/2011—Funeral Consumers Alliance has joined with the International Cemetery, Cremation, and Funeral Association to submit a friend of the court brief in support of the monks of St. Joseph's Abbey. The monastery in Covington, Louisiana, decided to help earn a living for its monks by making and selling wooden caskets. The Lousiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, desperate to keep casket profits in the coffers of the state's undertakers, ordered the monks to stop. They said no-thank you and sued the board in federal court—with the help of the economic-liberty bulldogs at the Institute for Justice. Earlier this year the monks won; the court recognized the state board's "public health" and "consumer protection" rationale for restricting casket sales to licensed funeral directors was a sham. For earlier coverage of the state's absurd crusade go here.
Not exactly the most savvy when it comes to PR or priorities, Louisiana decided to appeal. So FCA and ICCFA—a consumer group and an industry trade association—teamed up to ask the court bury the restrictive law. Irrational sales restrictions based on industry greed harm both consumers and business. Grieving families are deprived of product choices and price competition while legitimate business enterprises can't get off the ground. When state regulators who purport to protect the public instead defend an established business monopoly it's time to pull the plug.
We thank Addison Draper and Elbert Lin of Wiley Rein LLP for their expert help in preparing this brief.
What is the least expensive funeral and burial anyone knows about? (Include all legal possibilities such as "potter's field" burials, burial at sea, dig a hole in some remote untraveled spot in the woods, leave to the wild animals, etc.)
Has anyone ever heard of someone burning a shack down around their dead body when instruments no longer detect vital signs and trigger a fire????
If some of these ideas sound gruesome, I find nothing more gruesome than profiting from someone's death and holding them captive by law to take the costly route without a cheap alternative choice.
An interesting story from Nathaniel Hawthorne's travels in Great Brlitain. Apparently somewhere back in history during a plague that was killing thousands, a large built man had caught the disease and knew he was dying. Concerned lest the young lad and his female housekeeper, the only people available to dispose of his body when he died, would be unable to move the body to the grave, himself dug the hole that would become his grave, then laid in the grave until death took him. Then all the lad and housekeeper would need to do was to shovel dirt over the dead body. Dying was so much simpler then.
- Daniel Doty
The chances of my returning to this site to read the responses to this comment depend on remembering what site I posted it on, my memory being not that trustworthy, so I'd appreciate an email response to: belteshazzar@windstream.net
One of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the right to earn an honest living in the occupation of our choice without arbitrary government interference. Louisiana’s casket licensing law violates that right.
What do you think about that state's new law requiring that only commercial funeral service directors may sign death certificates?