As the family tells it, his 6-foot-9 body was bent like a pretzel and stuffed into a too-short casket in an everlasting indignity to the man.
"He can't rest in peace comfortably," his widow, Josie Freeman, said yesterday.
The deceased's relatives are suing Angelus Funeral Home, which insists it was only trying to keep down costs for the bereaved, and the family hopes someday to exhume the body from a Chicago cemetery and place it in a larger casket.
"I just want everything done right," Mrs. Freeman said. "My husband took a lot of pride in himself. He took care of his appearance and personal hygiene. This just isn't him."
Freeman, 39, died of complications of Hodgkin's lymphoma on Valentine's Day, and his wife contacted the 74-year-old Angelus Funeral Home, one of the most widely respected mortuaries in Los Angeles.
Angelus funeral director Blanche Laws-McConnell said she told the family Freeman's legs would be crossed and his knees bent so he would fit in a standard casket. The average inside length of a casket is 6 feet, 6 inches.
Ron Hast, publisher of the national industry magazine Mortuary Management, said he was familiar with the case and defended Angelus. He said Freeman's knees were raised only 5 or 6 inches, and some padding was removed from the coffin.
Otherwise, Freeman would have required a custom-made extra-long casket, a custom grave, a custom vault and other custom features, and "those things would have greatly increased costs," Hast said.
The family paid $5,320.95 for the funeral, which included air shipment to Illinois for burial. He was buried in the York Co.'s Majestic casket ($2,341.50), the standard casket with the longest interior space, Hast said.
But David Wood, the Freemans' attorney, said Angelus had assured the family a larger casket would be used and the body would "rest comfortably."
The March 28 Superior Court suit claimed fraud, breach of contract, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Mrs. Freeman, the suit said, had heard that some funeral homes break, bend, fold or cut the legs of tall people to fit them into regular caskets. The widow "vowed that such an indignity should not, would not, be visited on the remains," the suit said.
Just before the burial in Chicago, Freeman looked inside the casket. "To her astonishment, amazement, horror, shock and mortification," her husband's body was crammed inside with his legs at a 45-degree angle, the suit said.
In life, Freeman, a telecommunications engineer who most recently worked on the cable Family Channel show "Home & Family," often suffered because of his height.
"He would have to keep his head low or duck going in and out of doorways. He always had to fly first-class or sit in front of the plane so his legs could stretch out. When he rented a car, he had to get a big car," his widow said.
He was hospitalized the last four months of his life, and the hospital beds were too small. "A nursing supervisor had the end of the bed frame taken off and they added wood with pillows to keep his feet up," Freeman said.