Lucker v. Bayside Cemetery

114 A.D.3d 162, 979 N.Y.S.2d 8

This text of 114 A.D.3d 162 (Lucker v. Bayside Cemetery) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lucker v. Bayside Cemetery, 114 A.D.3d 162, 979 N.Y.S.2d 8 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Saxe, J.

These companion appeals raise issues regarding the enforcement of perpetual care obligations when cemeteries fall into disrepair. The cemetery in question, the Bayside Cemetery, located on Pitkin Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens, is owned and operated by defendant Congregation Shaare Zedek, a religious corporation.1 Both actions are putative class actions in which their class status is not currently at issue.

The named plaintiffs in the Lucker action are five individuals whose relatives are buried in Bayside Cemetery. John Lucker, Elizabeth Lucker and Nancy L. Rousseau allege that their grandparents’ graves at Bayside Cemetery are inaccessible due to overgrowth, despite their grandparents’ purchase, in or about 1973, of a perpetual care agreement from defendants through a religious society of which they were members, the Chebra She-bath Achim Society. Lynn Cohen, who asserts that she served as the executor of her mother’s estate, similarly alleges that her parents’ graves at Bayside Cemetery have not been cared for although her “family member(s), including her parents, entered into one or more perpetual care contracts] ” with defendants. Fran Goldstein alleges that her parents are buried in perpetual care plots at Bayside Cemetery, and that her “family member(s)/ relative(s) entered into one or more perpetual care contract(s) with a Defendant.” These five individual plaintiffs purport to sue on behalf of the class consisting of family members and near relatives of individuals who purchased perpetual care from defendants.

The element of the Leventhal action that distinguishes it from the Lucker action is that named plaintiff Steven R. Leventhal was himself the purchaser of the perpetual care arrangement.

[167]*167Specifically, Leventhal alleges that in 1985 he paid defendant Congregation Shaare Zedek $1,200 for the perpetual care of three graves at Bayside Cemetery. The document that Leventhal was given in return for this payment, called a trust fund receipt, identified the $1,200 as the “Fund,” and identified the following uses and purposes of the “Fund”:

“Pursuant to Section 92 of the Membership Corporation [L]aw of New York, said sum shall be held as part of the Special Fund of the ‘CONGREGATION’, maintained by it for the perpetual care of lots, plots or graves in Bayside Cemetery, and deposited by the ‘CONGREGATION’ in its name in any State or Federal Savings Bank or Association paying interest thereon, or invested or re-invested by it for the purchase in its name of any Federal, State, Municipal or other Government certificates or bonds, or of other securities authorized by law for investment of Trust Funds.
“The interest or income realized from the ‘FUND’ shall be used toward the perpetual care and upkeep of the following lots, plots or graves:
“1. Ethel Leventhal
“Benjamin Stoloff
“Emma Stoloff
“located in said Bayside Cemetery, limited, however to the extent for which such interest or income derived therefrom will permit and pay, as provided for in Section 91 of the aforesaid Membership Corporation [L]aw, and without applying any part of the principal ‘FUND’ for that purpose. PROVIDED, however, that the ‘CONGREGATION’ will not allow, pay or apply in any year or be in any way responsible for a higher rate of interest on the principal sum of the aforesaid ‘FUND’ than the average rate of interest it may receive in such year from its total perpetual care funds.
“The ‘CONGREGATION’ shall not be held responsible for any loss, depletion or depreciation of the principal of said ‘FUND’, or the value of any investment made therewith after it makes such deposit or investment.”

[168]*168Leventhal sues on behalf of “all persons or entities . . . who purchased a perpetual care or annual care contract from a Defendant or their agents or assigns.”

The deceased relatives of the Lucker plaintiffs were given the same form of trust fund receipt when they purchased their perpetual care arrangements for their graves in the Bayside Cemetery, providing that the purchaser’s payment would be held as part of a special fund, to be invested by the Congregation, with the interest to pay for the care and upkeep of the specified graves.

The complaints in both actions allege that defendants failed to abide by the obligations created by those trust fund receipts, and assert claims for breaches of contract and fiduciary duty, violation of General Business Law §§ 349 and 350, conversion, and unjust enrichment; they seek money damages, an accounting of the perpetual care trusts’ funds, injunctive relief and imposition of a constructive trust.

Defendants moved to dismiss the Lucker complaint for lack of standing under the General Business Law and under common law, on the ground that plaintiffs were not parties to the perpetual care arrangements, but merely relatives of deceased family members who allegedly purchased such care. Defendants argued that if such claims were permitted, they could be brought by hundreds, if not thousands, of family members of deceased relatives buried in the cemetery who entered into perpetual care arrangements. Defendants asserted that the law limits the right to enforce such charitable trusts to the New York State Attorney General.

The motion court granted defendants’ motion and dismissed the Lucker complaint in its entirety (33 Misc 3d 1203[A], 2011 NY Slip Op 51771[U] [2011]), and plaintiffs appeal.

In the Leventhal action, the motion court granted so much of defendants’ motion as sought to dismiss the conversion and General Business Law §§ 349 and 350 claims, and denied so much of the motion as sought dismissal of plaintiff’s claims sounding in breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty (2012 NY Slip Op 33530[U] [2012]). Plaintiff appeals from the part of the order that granted the motion and defendants cross-appeal to the extent the motion was denied.

For purposes of these CPLR 3211 motions we must accept as true the factual allegations of the complaints and all inferences favorable to plaintiffs that reasonably flow from them (see Cron v Hargro Fabrics, 91 NY2d 362, 366 [1998]). We therefore as[169]*169sume that, as stated in the 2004 newspaper article quoted by the Lucker complaint (Julie Wiener, Weeding Out an Eyesore, The Jewish Week, June 6, 2003), “much of the cemetery remains mired in overgrowth, and large swaths continue to look like a rainforest, where fallen headstones are buried under vines, weeds, wildflowers and fallen trees.” The question before us is whether, even accepting these facts, plaintiffs are legally entitled to bring these actions.

The general requirements for establishing standing are that the party must show injury in fact, that is, an actual stake in the matter to be adjudicated, so as to ensure that the party has some concrete interest in prosecuting the action, and the court must have before it a justiciable controversy (see Schlesinger v Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 US 208, 220-221 [1974]). But, the requirements for establishing standing to enforce a charitable trust are more exacting (see Alco Gravure, Inc. v Knapp Found., 64 NY2d 458, 465 [1985]).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
114 A.D.3d 162, 979 N.Y.S.2d 8, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lucker-v-bayside-cemetery-nyappdiv-2013.