I was looking for more information about Kim Caroll’s case against funeral giant Service Corporation International (which I first wrote about back in January 2002), when I stumbled across some fascinating (and horrifying) old news.

At the end of May 2003, SCI settled a lawsuit in Florida in which company officials had been charged with several felony counts “including misconduct and incompetence in the operation of a cemetery, woeful negligence and failure to obtain authorization from a family before disinterment.” As part of the settlement, SCI will have to pay $6 million to various stakeholders in Florida, and may have to pay an additional $4 million if additional claims are made.

What piqued my interest about this was the geography: Florida (as we all know) is a Bush stronghold. And SCI has faced other legal entanglements in that other Bush stronghold, Texas, where the fired head of the Texas Funeral Service Commission sued the state and G.W. for wrongful termination, after SCI officials complained to Bush aides about her investigation into the company. That case too was later settled out of court.

Unsurprisingly, both Bushes received significant campaign contributions from SCI.

The relationship between SCI and the Bush family stinks more than… well, more than a corpse left outside to rot on a warm day.