Los Angeles Jewish Cemetery Pays $80M to Settle Body-Dumping Suit
A Los Angeles Jewish cemetery accused of dumping remains to make room for new interments has settled a 25,000-person class action lawsuit.
Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, Calif., agreed to a settlement worth about $80.5 million, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal reported, citing documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 27.
The lawsuit was filed in 2009. It 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.
About 40,000 people are buried in the 72-acre cemetery.
The settlement will be finalized in mid-May. The case went to trial last month in the Los Angeles Superior Courthouse.
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.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
