Lawsuit: Harrison County steers business to white-owned funeral homes

The owners of six black-owned funeral homes claim in a federal lawsuit that Harrison County, the Board of Supervisors and Coroner Gary Hargrove discriminate by consistently sending bodies to two white-owned competitors.

The black funeral home owners are asking for a jury trial, damages to compensate them for their losses and punitive damages against Hargrove. One of their attorneys, Michael Kanovitz of the Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy , said the law does not allow for assessment of punitive damages — designed to deter future bad behavior — against counties.

The lawsuit also says Hargrove misled the black funeral home owners by telling them he assigns bodies to funeral homes on a rotating basis.

“That’s the way it should be done in our business,” one of the plaintiffs, Eddie Hartwell of Hartwell Family Funeral Home said Monday. “That’s the way Mr. Hargrove had been telling the Board of Supervisors and others he did it. That’s not true.”

The other funeral homes that filed the lawsuit are Lockett Williams Mortuary, Richmond-August Funeral Home, Marshall Funeral Home, Dickey Brothers Memorial Funeral Home and J.T. Hall Funeral Home. The county, they say and spending records for 2015 confirm, mainly does business with white-owned Riemann Family Funeral Homes and Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Homes.

“They keep those deep lines of segregation entrenched as much as possible,” Hartwell said.

Tim Holleman of Gulfport, attorney for the Board of Supervisors, said the county is not discriminating. He does not believe its policies need to be changed. He said bodies handled by the county fall into several categories.

When autopsies are needed, the medical examiner — not the coroner — decides which funeral home to use. Harrison County has been forced to send bodies for autopsy to Jackson because its New Orleans-based medical examiner died. The former medical examiner preferred the facilities at Riemann’s, he said.

In the case of pauper cremations, Holleman said, the county relies on Riemann or Bradford-O’Keefe because both funeral homes can store bodies for the time it takes to try and locate relatives.

In the case of “removals,” when the county moves bodies from the death scene, Holleman said in 90 percent of cases families claim those bodies and decide which funeral home will handle arrangements. He said the coroner sends bodies to funeral homes in the communities where deceased persons lived. He said he thinks most families do the same.

The lawsuit also says Hargrove has told members of the Board of Supervisors and others “that white families would not want their loved ones’ remains handled by African-American funeral directors as a justification for his discrimination.”

County spending records for 2015 show the coroner’s office in 2015 paid Riemann $14,185, Bradford-O’Keefe $5,750, Hartwell $450 and Lockett Williams $300.

In addition to what the county pays, black funeral home owners say they lose even more money because they do not have the chance to secure business from the families who claim bodies the county delivers to funeral homes, or win repeat business from those families.

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 2:22 PM with the headline "Lawsuit: Harrison County steers business to white-owned funeral homes."