Court Opinion

ID: 9518920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:05:05.682121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:53.671805
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE BURMAN, dissenting: I am unable to agree with the majority of the court only in the construction placed on the right of defendants to decorate the graves in question in a manner which does not conform with decorations of the other graves in the same plot. A map attached to the affidavit of the Eosehill Cemetery Company shows the lots in question are contiguous. Together they form an area thirty-six feet wide at the front, thirty-eight feet wide at the rear and twenty feet deep. There is a monument in the center of the lot. There are ten graves in the front row, those of David and Ida Yondorf being the first two from the left hand side as one looks at the lots from the front. There are two graves in the second row with room for seven more. Beginning on January 14, 1928, a series of perpetual care contracts were entered into with Eosehill providing for decorations consisting of “planted flowers” in the summer time and “evergreens” in the winter time. These decorations have always been uniform with one another. After Ida Yondorf’s death, defendants entered into a contract providing for “cut flowers” for sixteen weeks each year beginning in May, followed by evergreen decorations plus “one artificial wreath” between the graves each winter. (There are no other wreaths in the lot.) The complaint alleges, and the answers admit, that the contracts for perpetual floral decorations have all been uniform. The defendants were requested to conform, but have refused to do so even though Ida Yondorf and her deceased husband were only given burial permission and never held title. Control of cemetery lots should not be taken from the title holders. Plaintiff, one of the title holders to the burial lots, alleges that for emotional, sentimental and religious reasons “in which she takes a deep and abiding interest,” she desires uniformity, conformity and harmony in the decorations of the family plot. Defendants make no claim to consent of other title holders to decorate the graves in question in a manner inconsistent with the other graves. “The right to bury carries with it the right to do so according to the usual custom in the neighborhood, and undoubtedly includes tbe right of making mounds over and erecting stones and monuments at the graves; . . Brown v. Hill, 284 Ill 286, 293, 119 NE 977. Cf. Sherman v. Gray, 150 Me, 13, 102 A2d 867. Rosehill does not have any cemetery rules either requiring or prohibiting uniformity in decorations. The custom in the present case would appear to be the custom established by the family in the uniform decoration of the ten graves in the plot. This pattern of uniformity has continued for over twenty years. To grant plaintiff her request would not violate the terms of Ida Yondorf’s will for she merely requested fresh flowers, not cut flowers. She made no request for a wreath.' Indeed, it is a fair inference that Ida Yondorf decorated her husband’s grave in conformity with the other graves until her death and defendants made no denial when plaintiff’s lawyer so claimed in argument before us. Since granting plaintiff’s request would not be against the wishes of either the title holders or the parties buried in the plots, I do not see why defendants should not comply. We are not here dealing with a commercial lot. Plaintiff is not demanding something that could not be done in conformity with good will and cooperation of defendants. Nor would her request, which is the legal right of a title holder, involve additional expenditures by the executors. The ends attained, uniformity of decorations, are not only reasonable, but desirable. Gasser v. Crown Hill Cemetery Association, 103 Colo 175, 84 P2d 67, 69. In my opinion, the summary judgment should be reversed and remanded with directions to take evidence to determine whether defendants have decorated the graves in question in conformity with the other graves. If not, a mandatory injunction should issue against the defendants to decorate the graves in conformity with the other graves in the lot.