[Download] "Cedar Park Cemetery Ass'n v. Cooper" by Supreme Court of Illinois * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Cedar Park Cemetery Ass'n v. Cooper
- Author : Supreme Court of Illinois
- Release Date : January 18, 1951
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 65 KB
Description
This is an appeal from a judgment of the circuit court of Cook County sustaining an order of the Auditor of Public Accounts holding the appellant cemetery association was subject to his regulatory supervision under the provisions of the Cemetery Care Act. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1949, chap. 21, pars. 64.1 et seq.) The act gives to the Auditor regulatory supervision of the care funds of ""privately owned cemeteries"" as they have been defined by the legislature in section 2 thereof. Only a construction of a certain part of the act is involved in this appeal which would have been addressed to the Appellate Court had not the legislature provided in section 20 of the act for direct appeal to this court. The facts are not in dispute, and all of the acts of the appellant in respect to the sale of lots, etc., and the collection of the care funds, together with their subsequent control by appellant and its trustee, have been, and are, free of any taint of fraud or overreaching. Appellant was organized in 1923 as a corporation for pecuniary profit. It owns 93 acres for cemetery purposes, 71 of which are now developed as a cemetery. Sixty acres of the latter are set aside exclusively for members of the Masonic fraternity and the Eastern Star. The remaining 11 acres are set aside for the burial of those persons belonging to the families of the members of the two orders. The remaining 22 acres have been reserved exclusively for members of the fraternity and the Eastern Star. So far, 11,900 individual lots have been sold, 10,800 of which were purchased by members of the two orders; 8600 lots have been put to their intended use, 8210 being in the area reserved for the two orders and only 390 in the area reserved for non-Masonic burials. The appellant, as a matter of policy voluntarily determined, has always restricted sales of lots, etc., and burials therein principally to members of the Masonic fraternity, the Eastern Star, and to those belonging to members' families or related to members. All of the officials and stockholders of appellant are Masons, though no charter provision or bylaw requires stockholders to be such. The appellant is not owned, operated, controlled, or managed by either the Masonic fraternity, the Eastern Star, or by any agency for either of the two.