‘It’s disgusting’: Nearly $1 billion judgment against Return to Nature Funeral Home a hollow victory

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A class-action lawsuit against the Return to Nature Funeral Home resulted in a judgment of nearly $1 billion, an attorney representing the victims confirmed Monday.

The funeral home about 35 miles southwest of Colorado Springs came under a multi-agency investigation in October after reports of a complaint about a foul odor in the area. Investigators said they found nearly 190 bodies in various states of decomposition that were not properly stored.

Owners Jon and Carie Hallford currently face criminal charges at both the state and federal level, but the class action lawsuit heard in Fremont County is the first high-profile case involving Return to Nature that has seen a conclusion.

The resolution of the class-action lawsuit does not impact either the ongoing state or federal criminal cases against the Hallfords.

The default judgment totaled more than $950 million — which with inflation will balloon to over $1 billion — and is the largest total in Colorado history, attorney for the victims, Andrew Swan, told The Gazette in an interview.

Swan, whose law firm Leventhal Lewis Kuhn Taylor Swan PC is working pro bono on the class-action lawsuit, cautioned against excitement about the financial total of the judgment because it’s unlikely any of the victims’ families will receive anything close to what they’re owed.

The defendant in a judgment in a class-action lawsuit is required to pay the sum ordered by the court, and Swan stated that the Return to Nature business and the Hallfords clearly do not have the money to pay the $7.6 million owed to each of the 125 victims listed in the class-action lawsuit.

“Full satisfaction of the judgment will have to come from the Hallfords’ assets,” Swan said. “The unfortunate reality is that they just do not have over $1 billion.”

Swan did not, however, rule out that the victims could have a small portion of the judgment paid out to them in the future.

“It’s possible,” Swan said . “But because the Hallfords just haven’t participated, nobody has a full understanding of the Hallfords’ financial picture.”

A default judgment is made in a civil case when a defendant refuses to participate in the legal process, or make court appearances. Swan said that at no point through the 10 months have the Hallfords even acknowledged the lawsuit.

“It’s disrespectful,” Swan said.

Although financial compensation to the victims isn’t guaranteed, Swan said the judgment last Thursday was important because it shows how “horrible” the Hallfords’ actions really were.

“It’s important recognition of how serious their misconduct was,” Swan said. “We hope that the family members derive some fulfillment from the judgment. Because it’s the result of a district court listening to them carefully, taking seriously what they experienced and then entering a judgment reflecting it.”

Swan added that he and the attorneys working on the case are hoping to amend the judgment to add all impacted families to the class action.

Carol Prest, of Colorado Springs, said she was among the “official” victim families who chose not to join the recently decided suit against Jon and Carie Hallford. She said her decision came, in large part, because the legal experts with whom she spoke told her an outcome in plaintiffs’ favor likely wouldn’t yield any real-world retribution for the couple accused of lying about the dispensation of Prest’s late husband’s remains.

“It really is a hollow victory,” Prest said Monday. “No matter (the judgment), nobody was going to get a dime, because they had no money.”

Many hundreds of families who used Return to Nature for cremations and burials during the time period in question — whose loved ones bodies were not among the almost 200 discovered during the Penrose investigation — remain in limbo, because they are not considered official victims.

The recent civil suit could have included them as victims, validating their reality, their questions and grief, but it did not, said Crystina Page said, who in the months after the gruesome discovery emerged as a community leader and hub of information, sharing updates and advocating for affected families both virtually and in the real world.

The recent judgment “validates for some of us what all of us are going through,” she said, “but we still have 1,000 victims that aren’t being acknowledged in this, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m one of the lucky ones. I have my son back. I know where he is.

“All of the people that don’t have any answers at all, that either definitely do not or likely do not have their loved one, they’re just forgotten once again,” she said.

The overlooked opportunity to include such families in the search for justice, especially a quest that — from the outset — felt like an exercise in optics, is “a slap in the face” to them and all victims, said Page, a supporter and major player in the “Colorado Remembers” project.

Formed in the wake of the Return to Nature events, the project aims to provide an “infrastructure of support” to families and community members struggling to access resources elsewhere. The group also has launched a grassroots campaign to create a public memorial honoring all victims of funeral industry crimes and abuses in Colorado.

“I might feel a little different if we were going to actually get something out of it, so we could put it back into the community …,” said Page.

“We don’t even know where that (almost $1 billion) number comes from,” Page said. “My kid’s worth whatever hundred million … but their loved one is worth absolutely nothing because there is no body? So, no body no crime? It’s disgusting.”

Both the state and federal criminal cases against the Hallfords continue on.

Jon and Carie Hallford face 286 criminal charges at the state level stemming from the discovery in October of 189 bodies improperly stored at the funeral home in Penrose.

Last month, The Gazette reported that a plea deal had been offered to both Hallfords that could see the pair of them spend up to 20 years in prison if accepted.

Further clarification about the Hallfords’ likelihood of accepting the plea offer will come at their next court date, Sept. 20.

In addition to their state case, the Hallfords face charges at the federal level. In April, the Hallfords appeared in federal court in Denver and pleaded not guilty to 15 counts of wire fraud.

Tim Neff, the attorney prosecuting the Hallfords at the federal level, said that the Hallfords are facing about seven years in prison if convicted on the 15 wire fraud charges. The Hallfords’ attorneys said they believe a sentence on federal charges wouldn’t be as severe as from the state.

At one of the Hallfords’ previous state-level hearings, prosecutor Rachael Powell told the court that the trial in the federal case is set for Oct. 22.

Jon Hallford is being held on a no-bond hold pending the outcome of his federal case, despite being released on a $100,000 bond in his state-level case.

Carie Hallford remains out on a $100,000 bond.

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