A corpse that was left unrefrigerated for five months is one reason a Marietta funeral home has been sanctioned by a state board.
Two funeral directors at Hanley-Shelton Funeral Home will be suspended temporarily from their duties and fined, according to a recent order by the state Board of Funeral Service. The suspensions start this week.
The well-known funeral home has operated for more than 45 years, and it will be placed on probation for three years and fined $1,000.
Hanley-Shelton will remain open, however. Owner Henry Shelton says he'll appeal the ruling. "This is the most biased investigation you will ever see," Shelton said Thursday.
State Administrative Law Judge Kristin L. Miller found that Henry Shelton and Edwin Shelton violated the law by refusing to surrender custody of the remains of Henry Lee Jackson and Reuben Hyatt. In both cases, family members disputed payments.
The funeral director license of Henry Shelton will be suspended for a month. Afterward, he'll be placed on probation three years. He'll have to pay a $1,000 fine.
And the funeral director license of Edwin Shelton will be suspended for one week.
He'll also be on probation three years and must pay a $500 fine.
Jackson died in February 2008. His wife had the body transported to Hanley-Shelton, and agreed to have the body prepared for transport to Alabama.
The next day, she switched funeral homes, but Hanley-Shelton refused to surrender the body, asking payment for embalming, according to the judge's decision. Jackson's wife said she did not understand that she had agreed to embalm her husband's body and disputed the charge. Hanley-Shelton later released the body.
In the other case, Hyatt died in December 2007, and Hanley-Shelton embalmed the body and held a memorial service.
The arrangements cost about $4,800 and a daughter asked for a payment plan, but the funeral home wanted the full amount, according to the judge's decision. Later, the funeral home lowered the price and created a payment plan, but the daughter did not pay.
The Hyatt family also wanted the body transported to Murphy, N.C.
When a North Carolina funeral home came to collect the remains a month later, Hanley-Shelton did not release them.
"They disregarded Reuben Hyatt's dignity by keeping his remains at the funeral home without refrigeration for more than five months after his death," according to the judge's decision.
Henry Shelton said Hyatt's daughter was supposed to meet the North Carolina funeral home and pay them, but she didn't show. The man from North Carolina didn't take the body, Shelton said.
"He decided that if she didn't pay us, she wasn't going to pay him," Shelton said.
In May 2008, Henry Shelton visited the daughter where she worked to get permission to transport her father's remains to the Cobb County medical examiner's office for refrigeration.
Hyatt, a veteran, was finally buried in the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton in July 2008, more than seven months after his death.
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