Los Angeles Times, "Crematory Ignored 'Sacred' Obligation, Court Told"

          The onetime operators of the Tri-State Crematory -- where hundreds of rotting bodies were discovered in 2002 -- ignored their "sacred obligation" of caring for the dead, a plaintiffs' attorney said Wednesday as a civil trial got underway. "Duty, responsibility and respect -- that's what the case boils down to," said [Lieff Cabraser attorney] Kathryn Barnett, who is representing nearly 1,700 family members. The Marsh family, which ran the now-closed facility, "treated the remains as no more special than a piece of gravel or a blade of grass," Barnett said.
          In February 2002, responding to an anonymous tip, authorities found heaps of bodies at the Tri-State Crematory -- a business that served Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and had been run by the Marsh family since 1982. The number of discarded corpses, some inside body bags, still wearing hospital gowns, eventually climbed to more than 300.
          In her opening statement, Barnett described Tri-State Crematory as a business that was slipshod from the moment the elder Marsh "set up shop in his backyard" in rural Noble, Ga., with used equipment and no training. He "slowly passed the reins" to his son, she said. Ray Marsh died last year.
          Barnett warned jurors that the case would be "hard to hear, worse to see." She described bone fragments belonging to one of the 100 people whose bodies had never been identified -- an elderly woman who probably had arthritis. "We will never know who she was, but we know that somebody loved her," Barnett said.