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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1563 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 29, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Court opinion:

  • On August 31: A person dies; his brother contacts a funeral home and requests a direct cremation, with no embalming; and the corpse is brought to the funeral home. On September 2, the brother signs a contract for cremation at a price of 3.4 k$, and the corpse is transferred to a crematory.

  • On September 7: The brother signs a contract with a different funeral home for cremation at a price of just 1 k$. The corpse is transported from the crematory back to the first funeral home. When the second funeral director arrives at the first funeral home to pick up the corpse, she is astonished to discover that the first funeral home failed to refrigerate the corpse because its corpse refrigerator was out of order! After sitting at 56 °F (11 °C) for three days before being transferred to the crematory, the corpse has generated "fluid seepage, maggot infestation, and unbearable decay and stench". Since then the broken fridge has been replaced, but the damage already has been done. The second funeral director reports the situation to the brother.

  • On September 10, the second funeral home has the corpse cremated. However, before cremation, the brother insists on seeing the corpse one last time. He is appalled at its condition, and reports the situation to the police. The first funeral director—who also is the president of the <del>state</del><ins>county</del> funeral directors' association!—is charged with abuse of a corpse, is convicted, and is sentenced to a year of probation. "If the President of the Funeral Directors' Association conducts business in this manner, who is to say what is happening at any other funeral home behind a family's back?"

  • The convicted funeral director appeals. He argues that the crime of abuse of a corpse is reserved for (1) acts, while he only omitted an act, and (2) treatment that the actor "knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities", while he had no such knowledge. But the appeals panel affirms. (1) "The purpose of drafting the abuse-of-corpse statute in very broad and general language was to ensure that offenses such as concealing a corpse came under the purview of the statute." It is precedent that failing to notify authorities of a person's death and allowing that person's corpse to rot counts as abuse of a corpse, even though it is merely the omission of an act rather than an act in itself. (2) "Even if there were no initial expectation that the family would ever see Decedent's body again, any person, funeral director or otherwise, would understand that family sensibilities would be offended if a corpse were allowed to decompose for days."

Call me crazy, but I'm starting to see recurring themes in the cases you choose to present.

I post cases that are interesting and cases that are funny. This case is interesting for the following reasons.

(1) It is highly likely that a person will deal with a funeral home at least once in his life. It's worth knowing how a funeral home—even one led by the president of the <del>state</del><ins>county</ins> funeral directors' association—can be derelict in its duty.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

Over the past week I saw only three cases worth posting (two interesting and one funny), and this is the best one.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

Without knowing anything about the relevant law, it makes sense to me that you can abuse a corpse by leaving it alone in the same way you can abuse a child by leaving it alone.

Partly this is because a corpse is treated sort of like a living thing from a spiritual point of view. We treat them as having certain feelings, or at the very least as having the relatives and dead person's feelings attached to them - it is tragic if they are mutilated or forgotten, we want to lay them to rest in a nice place, etc. Like books or an abandoned teddy bear, a corpse is not just a corpse.

Partly this is because a corpse is, in a much more awful sense, a living thing. An ecosystem. Which is going to go very badly if you don't care for it appropriately.

Without knowing anything about the relevant law

The text of the law is what makes the difference. The text of Pennsylvania's abuse-of-corpse law criminalizes only "treatment" of a corpse, which a layman would interpret as applying only to acts, not to omissions of acts.

Except as authorized by law, a person who treats a corpse in a way that he knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.

This stands in stark contrast to the definition of child abuse, which specifically criminalizes omissions of acts.

Child abuse.—The term "child abuse" shall mean intentionally, knowingly or recklessly doing any of the following:

(1) Causing bodily injury to a child through any recent act or failure to act.

(7) Causing serious physical neglect of a child.

"Serious physical neglect." Any of the following when committed by a perpetrator that endangers a child's life or health, threatens a child's well-being, causes bodily injury or impairs a child's health, development or functioning:

(1) A repeated, prolonged or egregious failure to supervise a child in a manner that is appropriate considering the child's developmental age and abilities.

(2) The failure to provide a child with adequate essentials of life, including food, shelter or medical care.

Thank you for the detailed breakdown. I see that the letter of the law regarding child abuse is much more detailed - as it should be, given the greater importance of children and the sad ratio of corpse abuse : child abuse.

In the spirit of contrarianism, I will point out that if, say, my friend moved abroad and didn't speak to his elderly mother for years, I would consider him to have 'treated her badly' in standard parlance despite and precisely because of the lack of any positive acts. 'Treatment' may be a term of art in law and have a slightly different meaning there though.

(2) The legal issue of whether a person can be guilty of abuse of a corpse by simply leaving it alone (rather than a more typical situation of fucking a corpse or dumping a corpse out of the back of a van) is unintuitive. I would not have expected it to come out this way after reading the statute.

In my state, people charged with murder who then abandon/hide the body somewhere (or just leave it at the remote site of the murder) are often charged with abuse of a corpse as well. It's a bit absurd and reminds of me the "murder, arson, and... jaywalking!" joke. Someone charged with first or second degree murder is probably not too worried about the abuse of a corpse charge (which is a felony, but the lowest level).

I was specifically thinking of this New Jersey case, which actually doesn't fit your pattern.

  • A man lets his friend do drugs in the passenger seat of his work van while he delivers mattresses.

  • The friend overdoses on fentanyl-laced heroin and dies. Rather than calling 911, the man finishes his workday with the corpse in the passenger seat, and then dumps the corpse on the side of "a dark, rural road", where it is found a few hours later.

  • The man is convicted of desecration of human remains and is sentenced to eight years in prison. The appeals panel affirms.

FWIW, I appreciate the broad variety of cases you post. I don't think something needs to count as "fun" in a traditional family friendly sense to qualify for the Friday Fun thread.

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