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Owner of Sunset Gardens cemetery in Cleveland faces license suspension
CLEVELAND, Tenn. - The 10th Judicial District Attorney's Office has filed a petition in the Chancery Court of Bradley County against the owners of Sunset Memorial Gardens for contempt in an effort to enforce a consent decree issued in January.
The petition states that Cecil Lawrence Inc. of Dallas, Ga., the company that owns Sunset Memorial Gardens on North Lee Highway, has not complied with several mandates in the consent order, including failure to maintain a complaint procedure for identifying written or telephoned complaints and failure to respond and correct identified problems within its mausoleum or grounds in a reasonable time.
"The District Attorney's Office has received many complaints about Sunset Memorial Gardens," District Attorney Steve Crump said.
The petition also cites recent civil penalties issued by the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance against Cecil Lawrence Inc. for failing to properly maintain the cemetery grounds and for "noxious odors" coming from its mausoleum crypts.
State inspector Joey Henson concluded those odors were caused by decomposing human remains, according to an August consent order that penalized Sunset Memorial Gardens with a $5,000 fine.
The cemetery faces possible suspension of its license and its owners were given 30 days to hire a mausoleum expert and submit a corrective plan of action after an informal hearing with the Department of Commerce and Insurance on Aug. 21.
The cemetery, which has been subjected to random quarterly inspections for a number of years, was fined $500 in June 2015 and $750 in May 2013 for violations involving upkeep of its mausoleum and grounds.
"The Department makes the families of loved ones buried at Sunset Memorial Gardens and at other regulated cemeteries across Tennessee our top priority, as our record shows," agency spokesman Kevin Walters said in an email. "We will continue to perform inspections and take appropriate action as necessary."
In addition to seeking a hearing, the district attorney's office has requested that Cecil Lawrence Inc. provide "a forensically audited copy of their corporate financial records including but not limited to the improvement and perpetual care trust fund" for Sunset Memorial Gardens.
This is not the first time state authorities have wanted to take a hard look at the financial records of Cecil Lawrence Inc. in connection to its ownership of cemeteries.
In March 2012, the Department of Commerce and Insurance fined the company a total of $150,000 for commingling more than $1.7 million of three cemeteries' improvement trust care funds with its general operating account.
According to department records, Cecil Lawrence Inc. withdrew $340,000 from Sunset Memorial Gardens' trust care funds in a three-week period in January 2009. Between March 2008 and March 2009, the company withdrew $563,528 in trust funds from Hilcrest Memorial Gardens, another Cleveland cemetery. Cecil Lawrence Inc. withdrew $873,927 in trust care funds associated with Wilson County Memorial Park over a three-year period ending in March 2009.
Most of the individual withdrawals were in the amount of $80,000.
Although the trust fund accounts were subsequently replenished, none of the withdrawals were used for cemetery improvement care, according to state records.
Cecil Lawrence Inc. representatives have not responded to requests for comment.
Paul Leach is based in Cleveland. Email him at paul.leach.press@gmail.com.