McGuireWoods San Francisco partner Kevin Frankel helped persuade a California judge to continue the conservatorship of four mismanaged cemeteries, preserving the rights of a synagogue that inters its members at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery.
The Jan. 30, 2025, order and judgment from Solano County Superior Court Judge Christine A. Carringer blocked an attempt by the cemeteries’ owner, Buck Kamphausen, to transfer over $50 million in endowment funds that were seized and held in trust by the California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau (CFB) in response to deteriorating conditions at the properties. The cemeteries already had been repeatedly fined for financial mismanagement, including using endowment funds for “personal expenditures,” and were found to be in a condition “hazardous to [the] members, plot holders, or to the public.”
Kamphausen sought to transfer the funds to Evergreen Ministries, a purported tax-exempt “religious organization” founded by his associates in an attempt to avoid the CFB’s oversight. After a trial that spanned several months, the judge refused to transfer the endowment funds back to a Kamphausen-controlled entity, concluding: “It appears by all of the evidence that Evergreen Ministries was formed for the purpose of avoiding governmental regulation, oversight and taxation.”
Frankel represented Congregation Kol Shofar throughout the trial, alongside the California Department of Justice, which represented the CFB. Two law firms represented the cemeteries and a third represented Evergreen Ministries.
In a Feb. 5, 2025, Daily Journal article, Frankel noted the case — In the Matter of Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, Department of Affairs, State of California — establishes new precedent in California and appears to be the first case dealing with cemetery conservatorships.
Original source can be found here.