CHARLESTON – A cemetery company is at the heart of another lawsuit, this time being named in a property dispute.
Richard Long Heirs LLC filed its complaint against StoneMor Partners LP, Cornerstone Family Services of West Virginia Subsidiary Inc. doing business as Long and Fisher Funeral Home and Pryor Funeral Home and Callender Funeral Home.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff limited liability company was formed after the death of Richard L. Long in 2015. He was survived by his wife Nancy Sergent-Long, children Donna Long Peele, Diana Lea Long and Denise Long Burgess and grandson Gage Hedrick.
At his death, parcels of real estate in Kanawha County were seized and possessed. They included Pocatalico Funeral Home, East Bank Funeral Home and Rebecca Street Funeral Home. Under provisions of his will, Long gave those properties to his wife with vested remainder in one-fourth undivided shares in his daughters and in a trust for his grandson.
When Nancy Sergent-Long died in August 2022, the three daughters and the grandson became the fee simple owners of the funeral home properties. In December 2022, they conveyed all of their right, title and interest in the properties to Richard Long Heirs LLC, the plaintiff.
The complaint says that since Nancy Sergent-Long’s death, one of more of the defendants have been occupying and possessing one or more of the funeral home properties when the plaintiff is the true and lawful fee simple owner. The LLC says it never has given permission or consent for the defendants to occupy or possess any of the properties, and their actions constitute a continuing trespass.
The plaintiff LLC says it has suffered damages including lost rental value and damages from waste committed by the defendants. It also says the defendants’ trespass is intentional, willful, wanton and reckless.
The plaintiff seeks an order of immediate ejectment against the defendants. It also seeks compensatory and punitive damages, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
The plaintiff is being represented by Christopher J. Winton and John J. Brewster of Ray Winton & Kelley in Charleston. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Tera Salango.
The attorneys for the plaintiff company declined comment on the case.
StoneMor has been named in a host of other lawsuits filed in recent years in West Virginia.
In December, a Cabell County man said the company buried his wife improperly, possibly damaging her vault and making it impossible for him to be buried alongside her.
There were two complaints filed against the company in December in Kanawha County.
In one, a Maryland couple accused the company of placing another deceased person in a mausoleum plot they had purchased for another family member. The second one filed five days later accuses the company of placing the remains of a woman in a mausoleum crypt that had been purchased by others.
In 2013, a StoneMor cemetery in Beckley was accused of selling plots twice. In 2019, a man filed a lawsuit against a StoneMor cemetery in Logan County for alleged grave desecration.
In 2020, a couple sued after an unknown body was found in another plot at Kanawha Valley Memory Gardens purchased 43 years earlier. Last year, a woman sued a StoneMor facility in Cabell County after her sister’s casket floated to the surface days after her funeral.
The company also has been named as defendants in a personal injury lawsuit by an employee, a discrimination lawsuit and a wrongful termination lawsuit.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 23-C-51