Kimple v. Riedel, 2099
| Decision Date | 22 September 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 2099,2099 |
| Citation | 133 So.2d 437 |
| Parties | Mary Ellen KIMPLE, Appellant, v. Carl W. RIEDEL, d/b/a Riedel Funeral Home, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Albert P. McIntosh, Jr., Orlando, for appellant.
Thacker & Thacker, Kissimmee, for appellee.
Plaintiff brought action against defendant, seeking recovery for mental pain and anguish alleged to have been wrought by defendant, unconnected with physical injury. The court, finding that no genuine issue of any material fact existed and that defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law, entered summary final judgment.
In the complaint, it was alleged, essentially, that plaintiff's husband died in the office of a certain doctor in Kissimmee, Florida, while plaintiff was temporarily absent from the city; that defendant or his agent took the body to the undertaking establishment of defendant without authority from plaintiff or anyone authorized by her and began embalming it, in wanton disregard of the rights of plaintiff whom defendant knew to be the spouse of deceased and whom he knew to be temporarily absent from Kissimmee; that upon plaintiff's demand that the body be released to her and upon her direction that it be turned over to another specified funeral home, defendant refused to do this until the following morning and then only upon payment of an excessive fee for embalming the body.
Defendant's motion for summary judgment makes reference to and includes as support his sworn answer, together with affidavits of four other persons. There was no opposing affidavit or any other evidence interposed by plaintiff, but she relies totally upon the allegations of the complaint, which was not sworn to.
The record indicates that, when plaintiff's husband died of a heart attack in a doctor's office in Kissimmee, plaintiff was out of town and had been for several days. Deceased had told the doctor in attendance that his wife was somewhere in a motel on Melbourne Beach helping to take care of a person who was in poor health, that he did not know where she was or how to get in touch with her. After plaintiff's husband had died, the doctor called defendant, and he also called the justice of the peace as coroner for that district. After a routine check as to circumstances of death, the coroner requested the defendant funeral director to remove the body and start embalming it. Defendant arranged for a search to be instituted for plaintiff through the services of a funeral home director in Eau Gallie who had formerly worked for defendant. After visits to several motels, that funeral director found plaintiff and called defendant to send a car to the Eau Gallie funeral home for her. Defendant did so, sending with the car a minister and a woman relative of the minister who knew plaintiff. When plaintiff was brought to defendant's funeral home, she informed defendant that she wanted a certain other funeral home in Kissimmee to handle the funeral. To this request defendant agreed, stating that the...
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...v. Food Fair Stores of Fla., 1958, Fla., 100 So.2d 396; Clark v. Choctawhatchee Elec. Co-Op., 1958, Fla., 107 So.2d 609; Kimple v. Riedel, 1961, Fla. App., 133 So.2d 437. Accepting for present purposes this reading of Florida law, we nevertheless conclude that the District Court erred in di......
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Fletcher v. Florida Pub. Co., V-101
...1.510 R.C.P.29 Kirksey v. Jernigan, Sup.Ct.Fla.1950, 45 So.2d 188; Korbin v. Berlin, Fla.App.3rd 1965, 177 So.2d 551; Kimple v. Riedel, Fla.App.2nd 1961, 133 So.2d 437; LaPorte v. Associated Independent, Inc., Sup.Ct.Fla.1964, 163 So.2d 267; 32 Fla.Jur., Torts, § 15; Restatement of the Law ......
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Kirker v. Orange County, 87-14
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Brooks v. South Broward Hospital Dist., 74-213
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