Harold St. John died in his daughter’s home in Cranbury, New Jersey on February 28, 2009. His funeral was early March 2009. Family members said their final goodbyes St. John at a South Brunswick cemetery but he wasn’t buried that day. Instead, under orders from a judge, his body was returned to a funeral home, where he will remain until it is decided whether lawyers for the defendants in a civil suit filed by St. John’s family can force them to have an autopsy performed. St. John who suffered from mesothelioma and died two days before his case was to go to trial.
The St. Johns filed the lawsuit last year against several auto parts manufacturers, saying he became ill due to asbestos exposure while working with parts containing asbestos in a family-owned auto repair shop in the 1950s and 1960s.
He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2008.
After his untimely death, the defendants in the lawsuit asked Superior Court Judge Phillip Paley to postpone the burial pending an autopsy. The request was denied but lawyers for the defendants appealed the decision.
The appeals court sided with the defendants, directing Paley to conduct hearings on the request for the autopsy, which St. John’s family opposed.
To make things worse, the family found out moments before St. John was to be buried.
Defendants claim there are many studies showing asbestos-related illnesses are not caused by auto parts and insist on the autopsy.
While all this fighting is going on, St. John’s widow Diane waits with her family to hear when she can bury her husband. Again.
Read the whole story at NJ.com.
