OLYMPIA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) – The brother of a man whose dead body was filled with tubes for a fire department’s training exercise can sue for the emotional harm it caused.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled March 18 that it isn’t just the custodians of remains who can make claims for tortious interference with a deceased body. In answering a question for a federal judge presiding over Robert Fox’s lawsuit, the state high court said close relatives with substantial contact can also seek damages for emotional distress.
“Historically, the tort of ‘interference with a corpse’ was based on a ‘quasi-property’ interest and limited standing to the next of kin. Washington has never placed such a strict limitation on standing,” Justice Susan Owens wrote.
“As an intentional tort, standing is governed by the foreseeability of emotional harm and is not based solely on who has the statutory right of burial. Among the foreseeable class of plaintiffs for intentional interference are those ‘close relatives’ with significant and substantial contacts with the deceased during their lives.”
Fox will now get to pursue his lawsuit against the City of Bellingham, which claimed only those charged with the care of a body’s remains could file such a case.
Foxx and his brother, Bradley Ginn, had previously lived together then spoke on a weekly basis before Ginn’s death in 2018. The hospital in Bellingham had no space for the body, so the city’s fire department brought it to its station.
Without obtaining permission, it used Ginn’s body for a training exercise. Employees took turns intubating his body approximately 15 times, leading to Fox’s lawsuit in federal court.
The federal judge asked the state Supreme Court if only individuals identified as next of kin could sue and whether Fox, if others could bring lawsuits, was in the class of individuals permitted to do so.
Ginn’s wife, his next of kin, has also sued the city.