JEWISH FUNERAL PRACTICES COMMITTEE
OF GREATER WASHINGTON
4000 CATHEDRAL AVE NW, STE 332PHONE 202 966 1545
WASHINGTON DC
July 5, 2013
FURTHER BULLETIN RE SCI ACQUISITION
OF HINES-RINALDI FUNERAL HOME
This is to bring you up to date on JFPC's opposition to Service Corporation International's (SCI) acquisition of Stewart Enterprises including Hines-Rinaldi Funeral Home. SCI operates Danzansky, Sagel, Gawlers, and many other death related properties in our area. If SCI get's Hines-Rinaldi, our community looks to be deprived of its competition with the SCI outlets. Our basic funeral in the neighborhood of $1820 may be gone, and we may see a solid wall of $5000-6000 prices. Our immediate aim is to have Hines-Rinaldi excluded from the merger by "divestiture." Alternative remedies may be available.
Let me know if you haven't seen our filing with FTC and I'll send a copy. Also, our bulletin asking people to write to various officials who may be influential.
There's been a Jewish Week article, and the internet has a lot about FTC procedure. There's a Wikipedia on SCI.
Our team has been Marc Barinbaum, David Zinner, myself and David Balto. David Balto is a merger specialist attorney and ex-FTC Policy Director, member of Or Kodesh's Hevra Kadisha, who learned of the dispute by attending the Philadelphia Hevra Kadisha conference in June. He is helping us pro bono.
In addition to filing our Complaint, we met with several members of the FTC staff and continue to communicate with them, and have encouraged political, community and rabbinical leaders to contact them.
The office of the Maryland AG, Douglas Gansler, is following the FTC proceeding, and may have the power to bring it's own as the New York AG has done in the past.
SCI has requested that we meet with them, and we are scheduling the meeting.
How you can help:
1. Write, and make sure your congregational leaders have written, to Hon. Edith Ramirez, , and Jill Frumin, , at FTC, and Hon. Doug Gansler, , and Ellen Cooper,, at Maryland AG, and your senators and congressmen.
2. Send me copies of contracts that your congregations or organizations have made with any funeral homes, to , or Bob Hausman, 4000 Cathedral Ave NW #332B, Washington DC 20016.
3. Send me the names and contact information for people in your congregation who have negotiated with funeral homes. If you are one, send me your recollections of those negotiations.
4. Let me know if you have reason to think that some other funeral home would enter into the kind of contract that we have with Hines-Rinaldi.
Bob Hausman, JFPC President
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