Parents Get Token Award for Misplaced Headstone

VISTA —  A jury awarded an Oceanside couple only a fraction of the $5 million they sought for the anguish they said they suffered after a cemetery apparently misplaced their daughter’s tombstone.

Lee and Luvena Newby sued Eternal Hills Memorial Park in Oceanside, arguing that they had been devastated by a wrenching, fruitless search for the grave.

The jury, after nearly two days of deliberations, found the cemetery negligent but decided that the Newbys were responsible for all but 5% of their own distress. The jury concluded that the economic and emotional damages suffered by the Newbys amounted to $101,650. But the Newbys will collect only 5%, or $5,082.50.

One juror said afterward that the case never should have gone to trial. “They really did make a mountain out of a molehill,” said Jay Iyer, a nuclear engineer.

The Newbys contacted lawyers before working with the cemetery, and the lawyers exploited the situation, Iyer said.

“The cemetery collected the misplaced marker as quickly as reasonably possible,” Iyer said. “If the Newbys had any doubts about the location of their daughter, they could have resolved them very easily by talking to the people there.”

The Newbys’ daughter died after a long illness in July, 1990, and the couple visited the grave for the first time four months later, on their daughter’s birthday. Luvena Newby roamed the graveyard, calling for her daughter in an emotional search that was captured on videotape.

The headstone was 100 yards from its designated spot, according to trial testimony. The cemetery’s lawyers said workers misplaced the marker after misreading a work order that had been torn, obscuring the grave site number.

When the Newbys returned to Eternal Hills the following day, the headstone had been moved to where cemetery officials said their daughter was always buried.

The Newbys eventually had their daughter’s body exhumed and moved to a different cemetery.