Judges who uphold the corporation
Judge Jon Van Allsburg in Ottawa County, Michigan, now joins the ranks of those distinguished jurists who manage to ignore the obvious while making certain that well-lawyered corporations don't have to face up to the full consequences of their actions. I've written about this case before, and it just gets worse and worse.
Van Allsburg ruled yesterday that the family of Erwin Jordan can't sue for emotional distress in the outrageous incident in which Jordan's body was left in a box in a garage by Notier-VerLee-Langeland Funeral Home in my hometown of Holland, Michigan, picked up by a trash hauler, Priority Arrowaste,and subsequently dumped in Waste Management, Inc.,'s Auburn Hills landfill in Zeeland Twp., where it remains today. The reason? Because the family didn't "witness" the body being dumped in the landfill and didn't learn of the incident until more than a day later. It wasn't enough that they must go on living knowing that their family member was dumped in the trash.
That the body remains in the landfill is outrageous and shocks the conscience. Neither VanAllsburg nor anyone else with authority over the situation should have allowed Waste Management to leave it there. Costly to look for it? Sure. But that's what insurance and deep corporate pockets are for. That's what a civilized society does.
VanAllsburg has allowed a lawsuit to proceed against Priority Arrowaste on the narrow ground of whether its employees should have known that the box contained human remains. But given how this case has gone so far, and given that the Jordan family is from the Holland area's blue collar fringe and has no position and influence in the community, I'm not holding my breath that they'll ever get justice in this sad and horrific case.
Huh? So the mere fact that a loved one's body has been dumped in a landfill instead of being laid to rest in cemetery or cremated isn't enough? Van Allsburg has already excused Priority Arrowaste from liability on the grounds that Notier-VerLee-Langeland Funeral Home placed the remains in a storage box too close to a refuse container, thus violating some arcane provision of its "contract" with the waste hauler.