Newark Archdiocese wins court fight on legality of its headstone, mausoleum business

By Mark Mueller
Star-Ledger
April 30, 2014

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/04/newark_archdiocese_wins_court_fight_on_legality_of_its_headstone_mausoluem_business.html

A view of headstones inside Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover. The cemetery is run by the Archdiocese of Newark.

John Burns Jr., president of the Monument Builders of New Jersey, contends the Archdiocese of Newark is breaking the law by marketing headstones and mausoleums to the public.

A view of headstones at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover.

In a case that could have broad implications for New Jersey’s cemetery industry, a judge has ruled the Archdiocese of Newark did not violate state law when it began marketing headstones and private mausoleums directly to consumers at its Catholic burial grounds.

The decision, released Tuesday in Superior Court in New Brunswick, deals a blow to the state’s headstone dealers, who argued in a lawsuit that Catholic cemeteries should fall under a law explicitly barring nonsectarian cemeteries from selling headstones and private family mausoleums.

The archdiocese became the first cemetery operator in the state, religious or otherwise, to enter the lucrative headstone business in April of last year. Two independent dealers and their trade association, the Monument Builders of New Jersey, filed the lawsuit three months later, saying the new venture would swiftly undercut them and drive them out of business.

On Tuesday, in the wake of the ruling against the dealers, Monument Builders President John Burns Jr. reiterated that prediction of financial ruin and said his group would appeal.

"This is going to destroy our business," Burns said. "It’s going to spread from the Newark Archdiocese to the Trenton Diocese to the Metuchen Diocese and throughout the whole state. Then the nonsectarian cemeteries are going to pick up on it and say, ‘Hey, if the Catholic cemeteries can do it, we can do it, too.’ So how much longer are we going to be in business?"

Jim Goodness, a spokesman for Archbishop John J. Myers, said the archdiocese was thankful for the decision.

"We began offering these options specifically in response to requests from families looking for a choice in their time of need," Goodness said. "Now that this matter is concluded, we hope to be able to continue to work with monument providers in the same way we always have in the past."

In a related matter, Goodness said the archdiocese has paid delinquent state taxes it owed as a result of its headstone business. The Star-Ledger reported late last month the archdiocese owed the state tens of thousands of dollars — if not more than $100,000 — in so-called use taxes on monuments and mausoleums.

In court papers, the archdiocese acknowledged it owed the use tax and had not paid it. Goodness said he did not know if the tax bill for private mausoleums had been paid.

The archdiocese, he said, has asked the state for a definitive ruling on whether it is subject to the 7 percent use tax. Though the archdiocese is a tax-exempt organization, it could be subject to the tax because its entry in the headstone and mausoleum business puts it in direct competition with private industry.

Under the archdiocese’s novel program, Catholic cemeteries own the private mausoleums and headstones in perpetuity. Consumers buy space inside the mausoleums, typically small structures that serve as the final resting place for between two and eight people. The legal dispute did not involve large communal mausoleums.

Likewise, consumers don’t buy headstones from the archdiocese. They buy "inscription rights," or the right to inscribe words and symbols on a headstone.

The headstone dealers argued the program amounted to sleight of hand, sidestepping the ban on sales of headstones and private mausoleums.

But in Tuesday’s ruling, Judge Frank M. Ciuffani found the ban didn’t apply to the archdiocese at all.

Ciuffani, who presided over a two-week trial on the issue earlier this month, said language in the New Jersey Cemetery Act of 2003 — the law that bars nonsectarian cemeteries from selling headstones — clearly exempts religious cemeteries from oversight.

Religious burial grounds are instead governed by Title 16, the law on religious corporations, which grants the church wide latitude on its property, the judge wrote.

Ciuffani also rejected an argument that the archdiocese’s burial grounds should be considered "public cemeteries" — and therefore subject to the ban — because they have sometimes allowed burials or interments of non-Catholics. During the trial, the archdiocese acknowledged a large number of crypts had been sold to Coptic Christians.

Going forward, the judge said, the headstone and mausoleum business must be strictly for Roman Catholics.