I don't get it:
------------------- The 67-year-old retired airline employee died believing his mesothelioma was caused by the automobile brake linings he installed at his father's auto shop in the late 1950s and early '60s. He sued both Honeywell, and Chrysler...
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Why doesn't he sue his father for creating an unsafe workplace environment, or for not providing him with appropriate breathing and dust abatement apparatus?
Why sue Chrysler? Did his father's auto shop only service Chrysler vehicles - not Ford or GM or others?
He was also an airline employee? What was his airline job? Did he, per chance, perform brake maintenance on planes?
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The Family Of Harold St. John Is Outraged After Automobile Company Prevents Burial At Very Last Second
Denise St. John is widow whose husband has been dead since last Saturday, but his grave is still empty. She is livid.
"I have to bury my husband again," she told CBS 2 HD in her daughter's Cranbury, N.J. home Friday night.
"Wouldn't you be angry if you had to bury a loved one again?"
Harold St. John's remains are the object of a tug-of-war in a lawsuit over his fatal asbestos-related illness. The 67-year-old retired airline employee died believing his mesothelioma was caused by the automobile brake linings he installed at his father's auto shop in the late 1950s and early '60s. He sued both Honeywell, and Chrysler and the lawsuit was due to got to trial this coming Monday, March 9.
However, his sudden death on Feb. 28 meant a delay in trial, but the family was unprepared for the additional price they'd have to pay. Chrysler went to court demanding access to the body for tissue tests, and managed to get a court order the day of his funeral to prevent his burial.
The problem is the court order came down while the funeral was already in progress. The family sat through a Catholic rite of Christian burial, rode to Holy Cross Cemetery in Jamesburg and prayed graveside expecting that the casket bearing Harold's body would lowered to its final resting place.
As it turned out a process server had been sent to observe the funeral and once the mourners left the grave he served the funeral director with papers demanding the body be brought back to his funeral home. The idea of it still outrages surviving son Dennis.
"They waited until we left," he choked out between sobs. "I don't get it."
Daughter Debbie Eisenbrey called it "cold."
"Chrysler's kicking us when we're down," she sobbed. "It's not fair."
Mike Palesi, a spokesman for the car company, issued a statement from Detroit:
"Chrysler's sympathies are with the St. John family for their loss. Unfortunately, this process is routine in such matters in order to preserve tissue needed to establish the cause of asbestos-related disease. Chrysler acted in a timely fashion, in accordance with directions from the New Jersey Court of Appeals, and in full knowledge of the family's attorneys. Numerous epidemiological studies have, indeed, refuted the link between automotive products and asbestos-related disease."
The family, though, said the lawsuit has been in the works for more than a year and that Harold underwent a painful biopsy to provide a tissue sample from the pleural lining of his cancer-ridden lungs while he was still alive.
"They have all the evidence they need," Debbie insisted. "It's a stall tactic. They're ruthless."
A hearing has been scheduled for Monday in state court in Newark where the family vows to fight the demand for additional tissue samples, they said on principle. Until the issue is resolved Harold St. John's body will remain at the David Demarco Funeral home in Monroe Township.