ST. LOUIS – A federal judge issued an order both granting and denying several motions in a nine-year-old lawsuit against more than 40 companies regarding a widespread $355 million funeral home scandal.
Senior U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber authored the order, which was filed on June 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri Eastern Division.
Plaintiffs Jo Ann Howard and Associates and the individual state life and health insurance guaranty associations of Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, filed the lawsuit against the defendants alleging they were involved in a scheme to take money from funeral home customers who were sold pre-need funeral services.
A stay was imposed on the lawsuit in 2011 pending criminal matters and was in effect until 2013. In 2015, a jury awarded $355 million in compensatory damages and $35.5 million in punitive damages.
After the verdict, both parties appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the case was sent back to federal court. The plaintiffs then filed a motion for a protective order and a motion to compel, while the defendants filed two motions for protective orders.
In their motion, the plaintiffs asked the court to protect them from having to respond to the third request for production and interrogatories, because they claim the information sought in the requests is irrelevant to the appeal because it involves conduct that occurred after a trustee at the center of the case resigned.
The defendants believe the information is relevant to the appeal because it will help determine the scope of the damages that are recoverable by the state defendants, according to the order.
The court denied the motion and ordered the plaintiffs to comply with the defendants' discovery requests by June 28.
Pertaining to the motion to compel, the court granted in part and denied in part.
The defendants sought orders to protect them from producing a witness, 10 documents and from responding to the plaintiffs' second set of discovery requests after the case was remanded back to federal court.
The court granted in part and denied in part the two motions, allowing nine of the 10 document requests in the first motion. It also allowed the deposition of a witness in a limited capacity. Pertaining to the second motion, the court agreed to issue a protective order on four of nine requests.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri Eastern Division case number: 4:09-01252