LITTLE ROCK — The troubles at Woodhouse Mortuary started in February when its owner, longtime Forrest City funeral director James Woodhouse Sr. died, his wife said.
Pearline Woodhouse said she fired much of the funeral home’s staff and ran off a man she said just “hung around.” Soon he began targeting her business - pitching his employer, Kincaid Funeral Services, to families that already had contracted with Woodhouse Mortuary.
“I’ve had over 15 bodies this year, and I haven’t buried very many,” Woodhouse said. “As fast as I could get them, before I could get them in the embalming room, Miles was coming to get them.”
On Dec. 1, the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors found the man,Miles Kimble, 21, in violation of a state professional conduct regulation banning solicitation of funeral services, which Arkansas Code 17-29-311 defines as pitching bereaved families a certain funeral home to handle services “after death or while death is impending.”
Soliciting grieving families gives their profession an air of salesmanship that’s disrespectful, board officials and funeral directors say, while taking a financial toll on the funeral homes that lose business.
“[Solicitation] is serious because they’re begging to go into other funeral homes and get the bodies ... and very many of the funeral homes don’t get paid,” said George Smith, the board’s consumer representative.
State law doesn’t require funeral homes to reimburse the funeral home that initially handles a body for incurred costs, even if that first mortuary embalmed the body.
“As it stands, the initial funeral home has no other recourse but to file lawsuits against families,” said Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper, who serves as the board’s vice president.
Camper said Kimble’s case prompted the board to begin drafting regulations that would require a funeral home that takes a body from another to reimburse the initial funeral home for costs including transportation and embalming services. The costs would be determined by the individual funeral homes’ public price list.
He said new regulations are well overdue for Arkansas’ funeral service industry.
“In the past, you’ve had a profession that basically turned a blind eye to individuals [who solicited] because they felt like it was so hard to prove,” Camper said.
Board officials said it’s hard to know how pervasive solicitation has become but they’ve received more calls about it than in the past.
And funeral directors and board members agree solicitation quietly continues and that it most commonly occurs when new funeral homes become overzealous in their efforts to get started.
“People are going around jumping into business and then actually knocking on people’s doors and calling them on the telephone: ‘You know, we’ll give you a better deal.’ That’s not ethical,” said Effie Clay, who owns Clay Funeral Home in Forrest City and served on the board from 2002-08. “It’s not ethical. It’s not professional. It’s not anything good.”
But, Clay said, normally such a funeral home would have had to have “fully displeased that family enough to file a complaint.”
“And that never happens,” she said.
Clay helped Woodhouse bring four solicitation complaints against Kimble and Kincaid Funeral Services, which is owned and operated by Beulah Kincaid-Screws. The complaint alleged one violation in March, two in April and another in May.
The board concluded three of the allegations against Kimble lacked evidence. The board didn’t find evidence of Kincaid-Screws’ participation in any of the four.
Kincaid-Screws says the complaints against her funeral home and Kimble, who was one of the home’s funeral directors, have more to do with other funeral homes feeling threatened by the business.
However, the seven-member state board voted 4-1 to fine Kimble $1,500 and suspend his funeral director’s license for a year for improperly contacting the family of 51-year-old Julius Jones Jr. after Jones’ sudden death on April 13 in a holding cell at the Forrest City Police Department.
The board also imposed a year of probation and a $5,000 fine on Kincaid Funeral Services, because Kimble acted on the funeral home’s behalf. One board member was absent. The board’s chairman doesn’t vote unless there is a tie.
Kimble and Kincaid-Screws said they intend to file an appeal of the board’s decision in Pulaski County Circuit Court this week.
Kimble said in an interview that he had received official notice of his suspension Dec. 8 and will work in the funeral home as an assistant.
He declined to comment further on the advice of his attorney.
Kimble and Kincaid Funeral Services have retained Little Rock attorney Ron Sheffield to represent the funeral home in the appeal.
Kimble can continue to work in a funeral home during the suspension but “cannot act as a funeral director in any capacity, including talking to families and making arrangements,” said Rachael McGrew, the board’s executive director.
If Kincaid Funeral Services is found in violation during the probationary period, the board could suspend or revoke Kincaid-Screws’ license or impose up to a $10,000 fine, McGrew said.
The board’s action comes nearly nine months after Kimble’s violation.
On April 13, Julius Jones Sr. made his son’s funeral arrangements at Woodhouse Mortuary, authorizing the funeral home to pick up Jones Jr.’s body, which first had been taken to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock.
Jones Sr. told the board during its Dec. 1 meeting that Kimble then contacted him and told him Kincaid Funeral Services would pick up the body. He didn’t know why Kimble called to move the body.
“We signed for Woodhouse to get the body, and I don’t know how Kincaid did it but they got it,” Jones Sr. said in an interview more than a week after the board’s decision. He added that Kincaid “did a beautiful job” with the arrangements.
Jones Sr. said his daughter Barbara Winfrey of Okolona made arrangements with Kincaid after he had signed the agreement with Woodhouse. He didn’t know if she was contacted by Kincaid.
Multiple attempts to reach Winfrey at a number provided to the board were unsuccessful. The number didn’t give the opportunity to leave a message.
Another witness, Thurmond Moore, testified that he heard Kimble say he was going to contact Jones Jr.’s family members after his death to persuade them to retain Kincaid’s services.
Kincaid ultimately moved the body from the crime lab and handled the arrangements.
Woodhouse said she’s had other problems with Kimble.
She said Kimble began harassing her by phone last spring after she told him hewasn’t welcome at her funeral home.
Kimble then began following Woodhouse, at times, as she drove home late at night, St. Francis County court records show.
On May 11, Kimble parked near Woodhouse’s car while it was outside Clay Funeral Home then began calling her derogatory names and using profanity when she came out of the funeral home.
He was found guilty last summer in Forrest City District Court on a charge of harassment, and a no-contact order was issued.
But, after the court hearing, Kimble called Woodhouse an obscenity outside the courthouse, court records show. He was later found guilty of disorderly conduct and violating a no-contact order.
An appeal of the convictions is pending in St. Francis County Circuit Court.
Kincaid-Screws, who obtained a funeral director’s license in 2005, said she believes Kimble and her funeral home are caught up in a fight between competing funeral homes who feel their business is being threatened.
She points to the five funeral homes, some of which have operated in the area for decades, who supported Woodhouse’s complaint Tuesday.
Employees from McNeal-Calahan Funeral Home of Brinkley, Brown’s Christianway Funeral Home in Helena-West Helena, and Jackson Highley Funeral Home of Helena-West Helena testified to the board in support of varying allegations against Kimble and Kincaid Funeral Services.
“They want to close my business down because I’m new in a small area,” Kincaid-Screws said, noting she opened her first branch in Helena-West Helena in 2007 and another in Forrest City earlier this year.
She said she believes Kimble is innocent because he didn’t handle the Jones arrangements.
“I dealt with the family,” Kincaid-Screws said. “Miles didn’t have contact with the family.”
Kincaid-Screws presented letters to the board from members of the four families involved in the solicitation allegations - including a letter from Winfrey - each expressing that they chose Kincaid Funeral Services on their own. But, board officials said testimony in support of Woodhouse’s complaint outweighed documents submitted by Kincaid-Screws.
And, Clay said she “wasn’t there to pick on anybody. I was there because I’m sick of what’s going on, and I just didn’t like what they were doing to Ms. Woodhouse. It’s wrong.”
Kimble and the funeral home have 30 days to appeal the board’s decision. But board officials said its decisions have rarely been overturned.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 19 on 12/20/2009