Did a cemetery worker reporting bad behavior dig his own grave?

Posted on September 5, 2017 | By Omid Nosrati | Firm News,Wrongful Termination

In 2015, Reymond Blazys began working at Roselawn Memorial Park and Glenview Memorial Gardens, two cemeteries based in southern Wisconsin. After two years of watching his co-workers perform their supposedly sacred duties while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he decided to report their bad behavior.

Not long after, Blazys was fired.

According to a lawsuit filed by the former employee, Blazys witnessed his drunk and stoned colleagues dig sloppy and shallow graves. To make the grave boxes holding the caskets fit, they would smash them with backhoes to force them deeper into the ground.

Specific instances of the “gravedigging style” witnessed by Blazys included:

• One worker exposing a corpse and saying, “I won’t do that drunk anymore.”
• A grave not fully drained with water penetrating the casket and submerging the corpse who was a Navy veteran. The operator quipped, “Well, he’s in the water now.”
• Drunken employees digging a new grave between two occupied graves and breaking a drainage tile, resulting in the new grave flooding and the adjacent grave box breaking open.

After Blazys complained to his superiors in 2016, StoneMor Partners L.P., the owner of the cemeteries, flew three company officials to speak with him. He informed them that his co-workers behavior made him feel both unsafe and uncomfortable.

In his wrongful termination suit, Blazys equated their actions to desecration, citing state law requiring people to report disturbances of burial sites to the state historical society. He is demanding to be reinstated with back wages paid and legal costs reimbursed.

A StoneMor spokesman told the Associated Press that the allegations are false and lack merit.