Leg-cutting funeral home to close

A judge in the US state of South Carolina has ordered the closure of a funeral home where an employee cut off the legs of a 6ft 7in (2m) body.
The worker used an electric saw to sever James Hines's legs at the calf to make his body fit the coffin in 2004.
The owner had contested the revocation of his licence, saying he was absent when the incident happened and pointing to an otherwise unblemished record.
But after a brief hearing, the judge confirmed the business should close.

news.bbc.co.uk...

I am finding it hard to fathom why this funeral home can be shut down for the stated reason, yet banks, big corporations and privatised companies escape the same punishment when many people suffer death directly or indirectly.

Many people commit suicide when the banks crumble and destroy the livelihoods of others. Many people have died when drug companies knowingly supply bad drugs/chemicals to the market. Many more die when our societies infrastructures collapse due to poor management.

Why does the cutting of a dead mans leg need such a harsh punishment when many other companies get away with mass murder?

This does raise some questions.

Didn't the family of the deceased notice that their loved one's coffin was too short to accommodate him?

Did the family of the deceased buy that coffin?

Was it a pauper's burial?

I guess we'll never know now.

[edit on 2009/7/14 by GradyPhilpott]

I have been told that it is common practice for funeral homes to have to break the limbs of the deceased so that they will fit properly in the coffin.

I really don't see that cutting off the legs would be that much more extreme and I don't know what the alternatives might be.

Obviously, the judge thought the act was extraordinary.