Los Angeles Jewish Cemetery Sued for Dumping Bodies — Again

A Jewish cemetery accused of disturbing dead people’s remains is being sued for the second time.
Several dozen relatives of people buried at Eden Memorial Park Cemetery filed a complaint Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging mass disturbances of their loved ones’ graves.
About 40,000 people are buried in the 72-acre cemetery, including comedians Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce. The allegations include interference with dead bodies and with the right to dispose of remains, intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud, the local CBS affiliate reported.
The cemetery’s employees have testified that every grave at Eden Memorial Park is currently at risk of being disturbed and its protective vault damaged, the lawsuit said, according to CBS.
Eden Memorial Park is owned and operated by SCI California, a subsidiary of Texas-based Service Corporation International (SCI), the largest operator of cemeteries and funeral services in the United States.
Company officials “have not seen the lawsuit and therefore cannot comment on it,” SCI spokeswoman Jessica McDunn said in a statement.
In March 2014, the cemetery agreed to a settlement worth about $80.5 million in a class-action lawsuit involving 25,000 claimants.
The lawsuit claimed that Eden Memorial Park, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the United States, instructed groundskeepers to “secretly break concrete vaults with a backhoe and remove, dump and/or discard the human remains, including human skulls, to make room for new interments.” The alleged incidents began as early as 1985.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 2
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.