Case ID: ad_170/html/0658-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Smith, J.:", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Marcus B. Coleman, Respondent, v. St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Appellant.
    First Department,
    December 3, 1915.
    Religious corporations — cemeteries — negligence — failure to protect grave from violation.
    A religious corporation which maintains a cemetery under the authority of section 7 of the Religious Corporations Law is not liable in damages to the relatives of a decedent whose body was stolen from a grave in the cemetery by unknown persons, on the theory that it was negligent in failing properly to protect the grave.
    No such duty of protection is imposed upon the corporation in the absence of a statutory requirement or express contract to do so.
    Appeal by the defendant, St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church, from an order of the Supreme Court, made at the New York Special Term and entered in the office of the clerk of the county of New York on the 21st day of May, 1915, denying defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings dismissing the complaint after an answer had been interposed thereto.
    
      W. H. Van Benschoten of counsel [W. H. Dannat Pell, with him on the brief], Bowers & Sands, attorneys, for the appellant.
    
      Eugene I. Gottlieb, for the respondent.
   Smith, J.:

The defendant is a religious corporation owning land dedicated to cemetery purposes. By section 7 of the Religious Corporations Law (Consol. Laws, chap. 51; Laws of 1909, chap. 53) a religious corporation holding lands for such purpose “may sell and convey lots in such cemetery for burial purposes, subject to such conditions and restrictions as may be imposed by the instrument by which the same was acquired, or by the rules and regulations adopted by such corporation.” The complaint alleged that this plaintiff on the 7th day of October, 1913, entered into an agreement with the defendant whereby in consideration of the sum of twenty-five dollars the defendant agreed to bury and inter the body of one Lawrence Smith, a brother of the plaintiff, in its cemetery, and that pursuant to said agreement such body was so buried; that thereafter said body was stolen from the grave by certain people unknown to the plaintiff. It is further alleged that the defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff to guard and protect said grave from such theft and by reason of the violation of that duty the plaintiff has suffered great mental anguish and damages. The defendant’s answer was served and a motion made by the defendant for judgment on the pleadings, which was denied, and from the order denying such motion this appeal is taken.

The complaint does not allege any contract by the defendant corporation to guard and protect the graves in its cemetery; the statute under which the defendant is incorporated and permitted to hold such lands and sell plots therefrom imposes no such duty, and the plaintiff’s cause of action, if any, must rest upon some implied duty of any corporation selling lots for burial purposes to protect from theft the graves placed therein. The theft of a dead body is an unusual occurrence. Such a duty would involve a large expenditure of money in order to secure the graves from molestation by outsiders. Without contract obligation to protect these graves and without statutory duty so to do it is difficult to conceive any reasonable grounds from which such a duty can be implied. We are referred tono authority and are able to find none in which such a duty has been declared to exist, and in our opinion so to hold would cast an unreasonable burden upon such corporations entirely out of proportion to any compensation that they would be able to charge for the sale of burial plots.

The order appealed from should, therefore, be reversed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements to appellant, and the motion for judgment upon the pleadings granted, with ten dollars costs.

Ingraham, P. J., McLaughlin, Laughlin and Dowling, JJ., concurred.

Order reversed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements, and motion granted, with ten dollars costs.