The difficulty for the lay person in obtaining a death permit in California Karen Leonard Summarised from an article entitled 'Fishing in Lake County', e-mailed to the Institute by Karen Leonard, of the Natural Death Care Project in California. Both those types of charges are now illegal, thanks to people who felt being ripped off in death is truly the most offensive act consumerism has to offer. But it is quickly becoming just a paper policy - it isn't truly a right if you have no ability to exercise it. This sounds simple enough, but has become increasingly difficult over the past year since the project started. You see, they have handled more cases than some of the mortuaries in these parts, and the funeral directors don't like being robbed of their 'bread and butter'.
Corpses are commerce.
Denying them the right to charge you for services you would rather do yourself is, well, so un-American. So, like the 'caring and professional' people they are, funeral directors began to pressure the crematoria by threatening to blackball them. That is against the law, but apparently it is another one of those laws that is only 'on paper'. So I decided to go fishing in Lake County for a permit. He couldn't answer this, but he told me he would find out and get back to me.