180 Conn. 680 | Conn. | 1980
These consolidated cases were instituted on behalf of eight vault manufacturing companies, a burial vault manufacturers’ association, six funeral directors, two funeral director associations, and two private individuals who own plots located in the cemetery property owned by the defendant Mountain Grove Cemetery Association (hereinafter Mountain Grove). The complaints in
Mountain Grove was organized in 1849 as a private enterprise for cemetery purposes. In 1889, it was organized, by Special Act No. 231, as a non-stock corporation, open to the public, with the “right
Although not required by statute, cemetery regulations require that all caskets be enclosed in a nonperishable vault or casket container for earth interment. See Dries v. Charles Evans Cemetery Co., 109 Pa. Super. 498, 167 A. 237 (cemetery regulation providing that vaults required for burial be made of either brick, stone, or concrete held to be a reasonable exercise of the cemetery’s charter powers). The use of burial vaults prevents the collapse of the grave upon the decomposition of the body and the casket and thus enables the cemetery to properly maintain the lots and preserve the aesthetic quality of the grounds. Burial vaults are usually acquired through funeral directors who show prospective purchasers samples, or mock-ups, of various vault styles from which to choose, and when the decision is made as to which vault is to be utilized, the funeral director contacts the vault manufacturer and places an order for that vault. This transaction is treated as if the funeral director sold the vault inasmuch as the director makes a profit and must pay sales tax on that sale. The manufacturer then delivers the vault to the cemetery for installation in the grave prior to the funeral
In 1975, Mountain Grove sought to offer an alternative form of below ground burial utilizing a vault called a double depth lawn crypt. A double depth lawn crypt is a single unit in which two caskets are placed, one on top of the other, separated by a shelf.
Mountain Grove eventually purchased 128 double depth crypts from a vault manufacturer in Pennsylvania which were all installed en masse. The instal
The plaintiffs contend that a double depth burial crypt is personal property which is not necessary or proper for the operation and maintenance of the cemetery and that the sale of such crypts is therefore not within the mandate of Mountain Grove’s charter
As noted previously, Mountain Grove’s charter authorizes it to “acquire and to hold lands for the purpose of a cemetery.” The plaintiffs recognize that if deemed a fixture, a double depth burial crypt installed in the grave is conveyed as a part of the conveyance of that burial plot which is clearly within the mandate of the defendant’s charter. Unable to challenge the trial court’s conclusion on the basis of the method of installation of the crypts, the plaintiffs vigorously attack the conclusion that the crypts were intended to become permanently annexed to the realty.
The character of the property being conveyed to a lot holder is to be ascertained as of the date when it is annexed to the realty. Cleaveland v. Gabriel, 149 Conn. 388, 391, 180 A.2d 749; Lesser v. Bridgeport-City Trust Co., 124 Conn. 59, 63, 198 A. 252. Whether these crypts may be characterized as personal property in other situations, as, for example, in a dispute between a vault manufacturer and a funeral director or between a funeral director and a vault purchaser, is irrelevant in the present case. The relevant issue is the nature of the property being conveyed to a lot holder.
To constitute a fixture, it is essential “that an article should not only be annexed to the freehold,
In addition, the instrument by which the burial plots containing double depth crypts are conveyed clearly indicates that title to the vault is not conveyed to the lot holder. That document recites that the cemetery “does hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto the said [purchaser] and to his heirs and assigns forever, the right and privilege to use for burial purposes Lawn Crypt Space # (Emphasis added.) This conveyance comports with the rule recognized as early as 1905 in State v. Scoville, 78 Conn. 90, 61 A. 63, that “one receiving from a cemetery association a deed of a burial lot does not thereby take a title to the soil itself” but acquires the right “to a limited use of particular lots for purposes of interment . . . subject to the reasonable police regulations of the association having charge of the cemetery. The association may be regarded as holding the fee in trust for the purposes for which the corporation was organized.” Id., 94. See also 14 Am. Jur. 2d, Cemeteries § 25, p. 732. Indeed, with regard to burial lots in general, the cemetery is authorized to convey only the use of the lot and to employ whatever instrument to effect that conveyance it deems appropriate.
Since we decide that the charter permits the defendant to install double depth burial crypts and convey them, as part of the realty, to its lot holders, which is dispositive of the case, we need not consider whether, as argued by the plaintiffs, those crypts are funeral merchandise within the prohibition of General Statutes § 20-230.
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
In view of the fact that the two private individual plaintiffs, as owners of lots in the defendant cemetery, clearly have standing to maintain these suits, we do not reach the issue of whether the remaining plaintiffs also possess standing.
In each of these cases, the defendant filed a counterclaim alleging that several of the plaintiffs combined and conspired to unreasonably restrain commerce in violation of 15 U.S.C. §§ 1 and 2 (Sherman Act) and §§ 35-26 and 35-27 of the General Statutes. The trial court rendered judgments on the counterclaims in favor of the plaintiffs and no appeal therefrom has been taken by the defendant. Instead, the defendant moved to open the judgments on the counterclaims on the ground that the issues contained therein had been severed from the trial on the plaintiffs’ complaints and were therefore not properly before the court for the rendition of judgment. The defendant’s motion to open the judgments has not been acted upon by the trial court and the issues presented in the counterclaims are accordingly not presently before this court.
This method of burial should be distinguished from the double depth burial, also allowed in one section of the cemetery, where two single vaults, each containing a single casket, are installed, one on top of the other, in the same grave.
The evidence indicated that this reason for refusing to sell double depth lawn crypts to Mountain Grove was given despite the fact that counsel for the Connecticut Burial Vault Manufacturers Association had earlier advised that the burial vaults are not funeral merchandise and that Norwalk Vault had been selling vaults to cemeteries for ten years.
Section 3 of Mountain Grove's charter provides, in pertinent part, that Mountain Grove shall have the right “to buy and sell such articles of personal property as may be necessary or proper for the operation and maintenance of the cemetery, columbarium and mausoleum.” 34 Spec. Acts 23, No. 17 § 3.
Section 6 of the Mountain Grove charter provides in pertinent part: “The lots in the cemetery of said association, the receptacles, crypts and niches in the columbarium and mausoleum of said association shall be assured to the holders thereof by a certificate or deed executed in such form as the directors shall prescribe and the title to the me thereof may be transferred in such manner as the directors may direct . . . .” (Emphasis added.) 34 Spec. Acts 23, No. 17 § 6.
The plaintiffs rely on People v. Bloomington Cemetery Assn., 353 Ill. 534, 187 N.E. 455, in which the court invalidated a cemetery regulation which forbade the use, in all burials in the cemetery, of vaults that were not acquired from the cemetery. Becognizing the cemetery’s power to prescribe reasonable regulations relative to burials, the court nonetheless held that the “right of exclusive sale of grave-boxes is not a necessary incident to the powers expressly granted by the association’s charter.” Id., 539. Cf. State v. Lakewood Cemetery, 197 Minn. 501, 267 N.W. 510 (The cemetery was authorized to manufacture and sell vaults, which were for the exclusive use of its lot holders where the cemetery did not prohibit a lot owner from acquiring a vault for use in the cemetery from some other source). It is unclear in either of these cases whether the vaults in question had been installed in the grave prior to the sale.
The plaintiffs’ remaining arguments concerning violations of public policy as a result of the defendant’s activities were addressed in State ex rel. Willow Monument Works v. Mountain Grove Cemetery Assn., 168 Conn. 447, 362 A.2d 1341, where they were resolved in favor of the cemetery.
The fact that these double depth crypts are deemed fixtures does not imply that all vaults installed as part of the burial service necessarily become fixtures and therefore property of the cemetery. Although the vault is intended to remain in the grave for as long as the deceased remains there, if it is shown that the vault was intended to be removed upon disinterment of the deceased, then the intent that the vault be permanently affixed, which is present in this ease, would be missing. Similarly, a casket lowered into a vault would not become a fixture.
In view of our conclusion that double depth burial crypts are conveyed to lot holders as part of the realty, there is no need to consider the plaintiffs’ alternative argument that the sale of the crypts is not authorized by that portion of section 3 of the charter concerning personal property. See State ex rel. Willow Monument Works v. Mountain Grove Cemetery Assn., 168 Conn. 447, 456, 362 A.2d 1341, where, in construing the term “proper” in § 3 of Mountain Grove’s charter, the court held that the sale of bronze markers by the cemetery to lot holders was proper for the operation and maintenance of the cemetery.
“[General Statutes] Sec. 20-230. business not to be conducted in cemetery OR ON tax-exempt property. No person, firm, association or corporation shall engage in the business of funeral directing, except in continuing the supervision of a funeral, or in the profession of embalming or the sale of funeral merchandise in or on any cemetery or tax-exempt property.”