The Texas Funeral Service Commission has apparently dismissed a pending $2,000 fine against Hampton-Vaughan Funeral Home, the Wichita Falls funeral home which allegedly botched the embalming of TV newsman Tres Hood. According to John Horany, a Dallas attorney who is representing Hood’s family in a civil lawsuit against the funeral home and its owner, Houston-based funeral giant Service Corporation International, the agency has dismissed all pending fines against the funeral home.

“They said they were going to dismiss it and send a letter of concern,” Horany said last Wednesday, June 21, shortly after the TFSC conducted a hearing with SCI’s attorneys. The embattled agency had previously recommended that Hampton-Vaughan be fined $2,000 for professional misconduct in the case. According to Hood’s family members, when they were shown his body at the funeral home in 1998, embalming fluid was leaking from his eyes and nose. Later, when his body was placed in a mausoleum, the body continued to leak and there were ongoing problems with odors, gnats, and other vectors. The family later had to have the body removed from the tomb, put in a new casket and put back in the mausoleum. SCI did not pay for the new casket or the costs incurred in removing and replacing the body.

TFSC executive director Chet Robbins refused to comment on the matter. “That’s still an open case. I can’t discuss it at this time,” he said.

It’s unclear how the decision in the Hood case will affect the TFSC’s ongoing battle with SCI over a pending $445,000 fine. In 1998, a subcommittee of the agency recommended the fine after a lengthy investigation by the agency found that SCI had allegedly violated state rules regarding embalming and other practices. One of the funeral homes that SCI was investigating for conducting improper embalmings, Sparkman-Crane Funeral Home in Dallas, did the embalming work on Tres Hood’s body. In March, the TFSC recommended that the dispute with SCI be handled by the State Office of Administrative Hearings. No date has been set for that proceeding.

Last Wednesday, Gayle Johnson, Hood’s mother, was near tears after the TFSC rendered its decision on her son’s case. “I don’t know how they can get away with this,” she said. “I am blown away.”

This article appears in June 30 • 2000.

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