The Burial - Never Settle | Amazon Prime Original

The Burial is a new Amazon Original movie and is available to stream on Amazon Prime. It is a legal drama movie based on true story. It is a story of a small family business owner's legal battles against much bigger company with monopolistic intentions. It is a story of business ethics and human dignity. Initially I wasn't eager to watch the movie because of the overall theme that revolves around making money on inevitable human condition, death. After giving it a try, I don't regret watching it. It is great true story to share, and is well acted and produced movie.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to see spoilers, please stop reading here. This post may contain spoilers. Feel free to come back to share your thoughts after watching the movie.

Jeremiah O'keefe has inherited a funeral business and has been running his family business in southern Mississippi successfully for many years. From time to time many businesses go through tough times. O'keefe funeral business also faces financial difficulties in 1990s. In addition to nine funeral homes, O'keefe had a burial insurance business as well. And it seems most of his income was from the insurance part of the business. According to the state regulations, businesses selling insurance had to keep certain amount of funds in their bank accounts to keep their license as insurance operator. O'keefe's financial difficulties were that he didn't have enough cash available and found himself in a difficult situation.

Now that O'keefe is 75 years old, his mind was occupied by leaving family business to his children and grandchildren in a financial healthy and successful condition. He has lived a fruitful life. His worry wasn't about losing the business, but rather not being able to preserve the family business long into the future. After discussing his situation with his long time friend and lawyer, Mike Allred, O'keefe agrees that his only solution is to sell parts of his business to keep the rest going. Mike comes up with an idea to sell part of his business to bigger competition, Loewen funeral company, that was continuously buying up more and more funeral homes nationwide. Mike arranges a meeting with Raymond Loewen, CEO of Loewen funeral company. They fly to Vancouver, Canada.

The meeting takes place in Raymond Loewen's big boat. They spend some quality time, have good meals, and bond. When it comes time to talk business, Raymond explains how he sees big opportunity in funeral business as baby boomers are reaching old age and there is a lot of money to be made. O'keefe disagrees with Raymond's views and philosophy on funeral business. But he was there to make a deal. Both Jerry and Raymond agree on a sale of three funeral homes at fair market price. However, Jerry adds one condition for the deal to happen. He asks Raymond that Jerry keeps his burial insurance company without competition in southern Mississippi. While Raymond doesn't like the idea, after taking a pause to think through he agrees and they shake hands. Deal has been reached.

Another important character in this story is Hal Dockins. Jerry and Mike bring Hal along for the Canada trip. Hal is a young lawyer who just graduated from law school and passed the bar. Hal is also Jerry's friend's son. Hal is there to help Jerry with legal matters in this deal as a favor from his father. Despite being inexperienced lawyer, Hal becomes instrumental throughout this story.

Months have passed since the deal was reached. However, Loewen group doesn't finalized the deal. No signed contract, no communications, nothing. In the meantime Jerry's business continuous having financial difficulties. He ends up losing his burial insurance license. At this point after few month O'keefe's funeral business may go bankrupt. Jerry, Mike, and Hal all agree that Loewen company is intentionally delaying the purchase of the funeral homes as previously agreed. They are aware of Jerry's financial situation, and stalling the deal may benefit them more because they may end up getting rid of a competition, and acquiring the entire business for cheap. After realizing this Jerry is very upset how he was being played and bullied by a bigger company. He decides to sue Loewen company. Mike files the lawsuit. But Loewen is not scared, and actually were ready for this turn of events. What they weren't expecting is what Hal does next.

Hal Dockins takes Jerry to a trip to Florida to see another attorney in action. This lawyer is Willie Gary, who main practices personal injury law and had never lost a case. Jerry and Hal meet with Willie about their case. However, Willie categorically declines to take the case, since he doesn't do contract law and the monetary outcome of the case is too low. However, Hal is able to convince Willie to take the case. From the very start Willie makes bold moves. He sends a letter to Loewen group demanding $100 million in settlement. Willie, Jerry, and the team know this is a crazy amount they are asking for. Jerry would be happy with initial agreement of selling three funeral homes for $7-8 million. Willie was trying to make a point and deliver a message that he is serious about taking this case as far as it can go.

All of the sudden, what initially seemed to be a contract dispute, it turns into racial discrimination, a legal strategies to pander the jury, civil rights case. Everybody's intentions, motives, and character are put into question. Once the legal battle starts, two equally successful teams of lawyers implement strategies to destroy the other side's case. O'keefe's team start losing and it causes internal chaos within the team several times. It comes very close to dropping the case. But Hal manages to save the case once again. He is able to discover shady business practices by Loewen group. How they were indeed too greedy to operate funeral business, were taking advantage of poor neighborhoods in their worst times, how they were engaging in deals and businesses in bad faith. Willie, Hal, and Jerry get back to the case and this time determined to win.

Final blow to Loewen side happens when Raymond Loewen takes the stand and is humiliated by Willie in front of the jury. Both side understand that O'keefe is going to win and agree to negotiate a settlement. Both parties sit down at a table to close the case for good. Loewen's initial offer is rejected by O'keefe. It is interesting how they don't show what the offer was. They write the number on a paper, fold it and share with everybody at the table to see one at a time. Why not just say the number? I don't understand why writing down the numbers on piece of paper is important, instead of saying the numbers. Anyway, initial number is rejected. Then they up the number, and do the same thing. Jerry rejects that number as well and walks away singing "It feels good". Later it was revealed that the last number was $75 million, way more than what Jerry expected to get. For some reason, at that point Jerry didn't really care about the number itself, but rather he wanted Loewen group to face the consequence.

Both parties make their closing statements. Jury goes for deliberation. After jury reached their verdict, it was announced that jury awarded O'keefe $100 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages. I guess, Jerry made a good call by rejecting the $75 million settlement offer. After the movie ended, they showed what happened afterwards to the companies and characters. Loewen group appealed and ended up settling for payment of $175 million to O'keefe's company. O'keefe's business continued to flourish and he dedicated significant amounts to charities. Raymond Loewen was fired as CEO from his own company, and later the same year the company filed for bankruptcy. Willie and Jerry remained friends.