Consequential Damages That Decomposed on Appeal a Mortifying Experience

• Jurisdiction: Colorado,United States
• Citation: Vol. 36 No. 1 Pg. 59
• Pages: 59
• Publication year: 2007

36 Colo.Law. 59 Colorado Lawyer 2007.

2007, January, Pg. 59. Consequential Damages That Decomposed on Appeal A Mortifying Experience

The Colorado Lawyer
January 2007
Vol. 36, No. 1 [Page 59]

Departments
Historical Perspectives
Consequential Damages That Decomposed on Appeal: A Mortifying Experience
by Frank Gibbard

Frank Gibbard is a staff attorney with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and Secretary of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society. The views expressed are those of Frank Gibbard and not of the Tenth Circuit or its judges. He may be contacted at Frank_Gibbard@ca10.uscourts.gov or (303) 844-5306. The author thanks Daniel B. Cordova of the Tenth Circuit Library for research assistance with this article Readers are encouraged to contact Frank Gibbard with topic suggestions and to volunteer to write articles for this Historical Perspectives Department.

Before the Civil War, Americans rarely embalmed their dead Americans of the nineteenth century viewed embalming of corpses as something exotic, a custom of the ancient Egyptians rather than of the modern world.(fn1) If preservation was needed prior to burial, ice sometimes was used to slow decomposition.(fn2)

The Civil War changed all that. Families who wanted to have their sons returned from distant battlefields for burial began to hire embalming surgeons to preserve them.(fn3) By the early 1880s, building on experience gained in the war embalmers developed safe and relatively simple methods of embalming. The improved methods came into general use for cadavers transported, often by railway, for burial. By the 1920s, almost all dead bodies were embalmed.(fn4)

Board of Embalming Examiners

In 1913, prompted by concerns about the spread of infectious diseases from improperly embalmed or preserved bodies, the Colorado State Board of Embalming Examiners was founded.(fn5) The Board was empowered to examine and license embalmers(fn6) and to revoke licenses for "gross incompetency, dishonesty, habitual intemperance, or any act derogatory to the morals or standing of the practice of embalming."(fn7) As it happened, 1913 also was the year in which the Colorado Court of Appeals decided Hall v. Jackson,(fn8) a case that underlined the concern about the need for uniformity and competency in embalming practices.(fn9)

The Hall v. Jackson Case

It would be difficult to improve on the summary of the trial facts...