Court Opinion

ID: 8967839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 10:19:22.445903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:10:22.657562
License: Public Domain

BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part:
I concur in Part II of the court’s opinion which holds that the Federal Trade Com*148mission’s Funeral Rule does not preempt W.Va.Code § 47-14-1, et seq. (1983). I also concur in Part II n. 6 which holds that the district court properly rejected the claim that the statute violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment because it requires that 90% of the payments made for preneed contracts be placed in trust. In view of these rulings, it is unnecessary to decide whether the statute also infringes rights secured by the first and fourteenth amendments with respect to solicitation and telemarketing. Consequently I do not concur in Parts III, IV, and V.
National Funeral Service principally complains about the requirement for placing 90% of preneed contract payments in trust. The company’s president testified that with overhead expenses of 35%, the 90% trust requirement made it impossible for the company to operate. He explained that even if there were no prohibition against solicitation, the company would be unable to conduct its business. The president’s testimony is the basis of the litigation position that is stated in the company’s brief:
West Virginia Code § 47-14-5 further requires the trusting of ninety percent (90%) of all funds collected under the contract at the time when the funds are collected. This provision effectively allows only ten percent (10%) of the gross contract price for overhead, sales, and other current expenses including commissions to salespeople. Such a high trusting percentage effectively (and the Appellant submits intentionally) ceased the sale of preneed funeral contracts in the State of West Virginia. The minimal percentage permitted to be retained for the purposes of meeting sales, overhead, and other expenses totally precludes the operation of any large scale preneed sales organization and effectively stopped price and product competition and the dissemination of price and product information by preneed funeral sellers.
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The Appellant has been forced to cease all business operations and has in fact not sold any further preneed funeral goods or services under preneed contracts in the State of West Virginia since the implementation of West Virginia Code § 47-14-1.
Appellant’s Brief pp. 6 and 7. At oral argument National Funeral Service insisted that it wanted a decision on its claim that the statute violated the first amendment. But it never retracted its position, unequivocally expressed by testimony and brief, that the trust requirement, without regard to the ban on solicitation, precluded it from doing business in the state.
Inasmuch as the company finds itself unable to conduct its business because of the trust requirement, the controversy over other provisions of the statute is mooted. This is so even though the district court found that the statute did not preclude companies from engaging in preneed business. Even if we were to decide the other issues in favor of National Funeral Service, our decision would be of no practical consequence to it, for in testimony and brief it has asserted in unmistakable terms its litigating position. In the context of this case, our views about telemarketing and other means of solicitation have only the academic significance of an advisory opinion.