It is unlikely that Jeff Edwards spent one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on an alkaline hydrolysis (AH) machine to point out the deficiencies in human disposition laws in the United States. Edwards offered AH to his customers because he believed it was an authorized method of disposition under Ohio law. Starting in January 2011, Edwards became the first funeral director to perform a commercial AH disposition in the United States and successfully conducted nineteen AH dispositions using his machine. Before he could perform his twentieth, the Ohio Department of Health informed Edwards that AH was not an authorized method of disposition in Ohio and that death certificates would not be issued for AH dispositions. According to a health department spokeswoman, burial and cremation were the only two approved procedures for human disposition in Ohio.
Edwards sued the Department of Health and the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, arguing that Ohio’s statute permitted the disposition of dead remains by “burial, cremation, or other manner of final disposition,” and Ohio did not have any laws prohibiting AH. A Columbus judge admitted that the statute was confusing but granted a directed verdict in favor of the Department of Health and the Board, preventing him from using the one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar machine.
Jeff Edwards’s story shows how costly ambiguous disposition laws can be for funeral directors. This issue is currently of particular salience considering the emergence of new disposition methods like AH and Natural Organic Reduction (NOR). Experts attribute the growing interest among younger generations in new disposition methods to rising burial costs, declines in religious observance, and increased environmental consciousness. The continuation of this trend threatens to render antiquated state laws that only address traditional burial and cremation. Consequently, twenty-nine states have legalized AH or NOR, and legislation is pending in other states.
States interested in legalizing AH or NOR must acknowledge the significant implications the legislative approach taken has on practitioners, consumers, and regulators, particularly in relation to the clarity the state’s laws provide. States must take specific steps when legalizing AH and NOR to ensure their statutory and regulatory schemes offer clear guidance and consistent results. Requiring funeral directors like Jeff Edwards to identify the canons of statutory interpretation that would be necessary to ascertain which forms of disposition fall within the purview of “other manner of final disposition” is an untenable approach that states interested in legalizing AH or NOR must avoid.
