Ted C. Craig, Christopher N. Johnson, and Anastasia Protopapadakis of GrayRobinson's Miami office secured a federal appellate court affirmance of a dismissal with prejudice of a $200 million class action lawsuit against an international funeral home and cemetery owner and operator. Owners of grave spaces at a South Florida cemetery brought the multimillion dollar lawsuit, alleging that the cemetery committed wrongdoing with respect to wrongful interments and disinterments, secretly relocating casketed remains, and improperly maintaining grave spaces and the cemetery grounds. The class action originally was filed in state court but was removed by GrayRobinson attorneys to federal court based on a novel invocation of the federal Class Action Fairness Act. The federal trial court dismissed the case with prejudice, in its entirety, for lack of standing on the part of the plaintiffs to assert claims either on their own or on behalf of a purported class of thousands of similarly situated persons. The federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed both the basis for removal of the case to federal court and the dismissal with prejudice for want of standing.
