National Park and Transportation

¶ … Marie's adult son was murdered in a tragic accident in a foreign country while he was on vacation. The deceased allegedly consumed fruit from a poisonous tree. His mother, Marie, wants the remains to be brought back to the U.S. as well as samples of the fruit in order for an autopsy and tests to be conducted to identify the actual cause of the death. After completion of the tests and autopsy, Marie wants her son's remains to be cremated at a local funeral home.

She also wants her son's prized possession, a laptop computer, to be cremated and everything placed in two titanium boxes her son created since he was a metallurgical engineer. Marie wants to mail one of these containers to a relative living near her son's favorite destination for trout fishing at a national park. She wants the relative to break the seal and disperse part of the remains over the trout hatchery and the other part in a nearby public waterway.

Marie wants to hand-carry the other container herself by plane to another destination where she will disperse them in a state park that also contains wetlands that are protected by the federal government. Finally, Marie wants to keep a small amount of the remains and mail them on a simple paper to her son's father as a symbolic gesture of his neglect and the little value he placed on them.

Issue: There are several issues presented in this case including transportation of human remains and food products into the United States from a foreign country, cremation of a laptop in a facility that is licensed for human and animal remains, and transportation of remains by air in a sealed metal container as cargo (Walston-Dunham, 2012). The other issues include disposition of remains in a national park, state park, trout hatchery and public waterway as well as carrying human remains in a paper container.

Rule: Administrative agencies have the authority to establish regulations that are commonly known as administrative regulations. The relevant administrative regulations to this case are those established by the Department of Agriculture, the United States Postal Service, Transportation Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and National Park Service. Based on regulations established by Transportation Safety Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, transportation of human remains from a foreign country into the United States must meet certain requirements.

Administrative regulations prohibit disposition of human remains in a national park, a state park, trout hatchery, and a public waterway (United States Government Publishing Office, 2011). Additionally, the cremation of possessions like a laptop in a crematory facility licensed only for human and animal remains is prohibited based on administrative regulations. Analysis: Some of Marie's wishes are likely to be denied because they would violate administrative regulations established by federal agencies.

Marie is likely to be denied her wish to cremate her son's laptop computer in a crematory for human and animal remains as well as disposition of human remains in a national park, state park, public waterway, and trout hatchery. These wishes are likely to be denied since they violate administrative standards set by the Department of Agriculture, National Park Service, and Environmental Protection Agency. Moreover, she is likely to be denied the wish to hand-carry human remains in a sealed metal box and.