Eisert v. Archdiocese of Santa Fe

• Decision Date: 03 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 27,728.,27,728.
• Citation: 2009 NMCA 042,207 P.3d 1156
• Parties: Ida EISERT, Petitioner-Appellant, v. ARCHDIOCESE OF SANTA FE, Our Lady of Belen Parish Cemetery, and Our Lady of Belen Memorial Gardens, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: Court of Appeals of New Mexico

207 P.3d 1156

2009 NMCA 042

Ida EISERT, Petitioner-Appellant, v. ARCHDIOCESE OF SANTA FE, Our Lady of Belen Parish Cemetery, and Our Lady of Belen Memorial Gardens, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 27,728.

Court of Appeals of New Mexico.

March 3, 2009.

Certiorari Denied No. 31,638, April 8, 2009.

Kalm Law Office, P.C., Thomas L. Kalm, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellant.

Charles P. Reynolds, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellees.

OPINION

FRY, Chief Judge.

{1} This appeal arises from summary judgment in favor of Respondents Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Our Lady of Belen Parish, and Our Lady of Belen Memorial Gardens (collectively "the cemetery"). Petitioner Ida Eisert sued the cemetery and made a number of allegations arising from the burial of her father, Juan Castillo. Eisert alleged that the cemetery breached her father's plot reservation contract and the contract for her father's burial, violated the Unfair Practices Act (UPA), NMSA 1978, §§ 57-12-1 to -26 (1967, as amended through 2007), and violated NMSA 1978, § 30-12-12 (1989), a criminal statute making it a felony to disturb a burial ground. We affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the cemetery as to all of Eisert's allegations.

I. BACKGROUND

{2} The dispute below arose over the placing of the remains of three individuals— Eisert's father, Juan Castillo, her mother, Severita Castillo, and her stepmother, Sofie¹ Castillo—in the cemetery. Severita, Juan's first wife, was the first to be buried when she died in 1970. Around the time of Severita's burial, Juan reserved the plot adjacent to Severita for his own eventual burial and, according to Eisert, he purchased a joint headstone with both his and Severita's names engraved on the stone.

{3} Juan remarried a few years after Severita's death. His new wife, Sofie, had two children from a previous marriage, neither of whom is a party to this case. In 1996, after many years of marriage to Sofie, Juan returned to the cemetery and signed a plot reservation application that memorialized his previous reservation of the plot next to Severita. Around that same time, Sofie reserved a burial plot for herself that was located next to Juan's plot. The cemetery map indicated that this was a vacant plot and, because Sofie and Juan wished to be buried together, Sofie signed a plot reservation application and paid for the plot. Thus, the locations of the pre-purchased burial plots indicated that Juan would be buried between his two wives with Severita on one side and Sofie on the other. Eisert was not involved with the plot reservation activities of Juan or Sofie.

{4} On May 29, 2002, after thirty years of marriage to Sofie, Juan died. At that time, Sofie arranged to have Juan buried in the plot he had reserved at the cemetery and entered into a burial contract that specified the various fees associated with Juan's burial as well as the specific details of the funeral services. The burial contract indicated that Juan would be buried in his pre-paid burial plot next to Severita. After Sofie made the burial arrangements, the cemetery staff began to excavate the grave in preparation for Juan's burial. During this excavation, the staff discovered that unidentified human remains were buried in the plot that Sofie had reserved for herself next to Juan's plot. Because the cemetery had been in operation since the civil war, the staff occasionally found bodies in unrecorded graves. Having made this discovery, the manager of the cemetery drove to Sofie's house and informed Sofie that her pre-purchased burial plot was occupied and therefore unavailable for her future burial. The manager offered Sofie two options at that point. She could either opt to have a different burial plot located in another part of the cemetery, or she could have Juan's grave excavated at double depth so that she could be buried in the same plot as her husband of thirty years. Sofie chose the latter option, and the cemetery staff proceeded to excavate the grave at double depth and bury Juan as the first burial in the double-depth plot. The cemetery manager then made a notation on Juan's burial contract that his grave was to be double depth with Sofie and made a notation on Sofie's plot reservation application that her plot was changed to double depth with Juan.

{5} Sofie died two years later. Pursuant to the arrangement Sofie had made with the cemetery, Sofie's children arranged to have her buried as the second burial in the double-depth plot occupied by Juan. Sofie's stepchildren, including Eisert, were not involved in the arrangements for Sofie's burial. A month or so after Sofie's funeral, apparently Eisert went to the cemetery to pay her respects to Severita and Juan. She noticed that the ground over Juan's grave appeared to have been disturbed, made an inquiry with the groundskeeper, and was informed that her stepmother Sofie had been buried above Juan in the double-depth grave. Until that time, Eisert had not been aware that her stepmother had died or that Juan's grave had been excavated at a deeper depth prior to his burial to accommodate the later burial of Sofie.

{6} Following her discovery, Eisert filed a petition for disinterment and complaint for breach of burial contract in the district court against the cemetery. The complaint sought damages for breach of contract, punitive damages to deter future conduct, damages for mental anguish, and the disinterment of Sofie's body.

{7} The cemetery moved for summary judgment on the ground that, as a matter of law, it did not breach the burial contract or violate the UPA. The district court granted the motion, holding that there were no material facts to support a claim of breach of contract or unfair practices and that Eisert was not a party to, or a third party beneficiary of, any contract relevant to the case. Eisert appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Standing

{8} The cemetery argues that Eisert does not have standing to assert the claims alleged. Eisert asserts that she has standing both as a third-party beneficiary of the burial contract entered into by Sofie for the burial of Juan and as Juan's heir. We agree with Eisert that family members are third-party beneficiaries of burial contracts such that they may sue for breach of a burial contract, and we therefore do not address her argument that she also has standing as Juan's heir.

{9} Our Supreme Court has previously addressed the question of whether a family member who is not a party to a burial contract has standing to bring a cause of action for the breach of the burial contract and noted that "it is common knowledge that contracts for funeral services are intended to benefit the family of the deceased" and that funeral services "are rarely performed for the benefit of the contracting party alone." Flores v. Baca, 117 N.M. 306, 310, 871 P.2d 962, 966 (1994) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Thus, the Court held that "surviving family members may be implied in fact to be the intended beneficiaries of funeral and burial contracts." Id. at 311, 871 P.2d at 967 (emphasis omitted). Under the holding of Flores, we conclude that Eisert, as a surviving member of Juan's family, is a third-party beneficiary of the burial contract entered into by Sofie for Juan's burial and therefore has standing to sue for an alleged breach of that contract. Thus, the district court erred in finding that Eisert did not have standing. Despite this error, the district court properly granted summary judgment, as we explain below. See C & H Constr. & Paving Co. v. Citizens Bank, 93 N.M. 150, 156, 597 P.2d 1190, 1196 (Ct.App. 1979) (noting that "we are not bound by those grounds purportedly used by the [district] court as the basis for the granting of summary judgment").

B. Summary Judgment

1. Standard of Review

{10} "An appeal from the grant of a motion for summary judgment presents a question of law" that we review de novo. Tafoya v. Rael, 2008-NMSC-057, ¶ 11, 145 N.M. 4, 193 P.3d 551 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "Summary judgment is appropriate where there are no genuine issues of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Id. We review the record in the light most favorable to support a trial on the merits, Weise v. Washington Tru Solutions, L.L.C., 2008-NMCA-121, ¶ 2, 144 N.M. 867, 192 P.3d 1244, and we "construe all reasonable inferences from the record in favor of the party that opposed" summary judgment. Hamberg v. Sandia Corp., 2008-NMSC-015, ¶ 7, 143 N.M. 601, 179 P.3d 1209 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). However, the party opposing summary judgment has the burden to "show at least a reasonable doubt, rather than a slight doubt, as to the existence of a genuine issue of fact." Ciup v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 1996-NMSC-062, ¶ 7, 122 N.M. 537, 928 P.2d 263. To meet this burden, the party "cannot rely on the allegations contained in its complaint or upon the argument or contention of counsel to defeat it. Rather, the opponent must come forward and establish with admissible evidence that a genuine issue of fact exists." Id. (citations omitted). Thus, in order to defeat the cemetery's summary judgment motion, Eisert had to direct the court to specific evidence that demonstrated a material issue of fact on her claims of breach of contract and unfair or deceptive trade practices. We hold that Eisert failed to meet this burden and that summary judgment was appropriate with respect to each of her claims.

2. Breach of Contract

{11} There are three contracts that are at issue in this case: (1) the pre-paid plot reservation application signed by Juan in 1996 reserving a plot for Juan next to his first wife, Severita; (2) the pre-paid plot reservation contract signed by Sofie reserving a plot for Sofie next to Juan that was modified in 2002 to provide for a double burial with Juan in the plot next to Severita; and (3) the actual burial contract for Juan's burial, which was...