Catfight brews over pet cemetery

TUCSON — An outside investor group wrested control of one of the city’s largest pet cemeteries away from its original owner, thanks in part to its connections at the Bank of Tucson, a recent lawsuit claims.

The court action comes from Darla Norrish, who ran the Pet Cemetery of Tucson from 1998 until last May. She claims an investor group comprised mostly of officials from the Bank of Tucson conspired against her to gain control of the business, and she is asking Pima County Superior Court Judge John Kelly to give it back.

The roots of her complaint date back to December 2006. That’s when Norrish says the group, led by business broker Lea Marquez-Peterson, approached her with an offer to invest in the cemetery . The cemetery is located just south of Fort Lowell Park near Craycroft and Grant roads.

At the time, Norrish says she was licensed to provide cemetery, mortuary and crematory services there for pet owners in Tucson. But she had outstanding debts.

So when the investor group offered her a $134,000 loan, she accepted and used the money to clean up the debt. They included $40,000 in delinquent taxes, $78,600 in outstanding loans for cremation equipment and other liabilities, and a $15,000 consulting fee for Marquez-Peterson, according to the complaint.

But only weeks later, relations between Norrish and the group allegedly soured. She says a sales agreement was never reached, but that the investors did not demand she repay the note.

That demand came later, in December 2007, Norrish claims. Two months later, Dennis J. Clancy named himself the new trustee under the cemetery’s deed of trust and put the business up for sale at public auction on the same day, the complaint claims. The basis for the sale was that Norrish had failed to pay off the loan.

Norrish claims she never received a notice of breach prior to the sale, or that the sale notice was posted on the property. When the auction was held in May, the investor group bought the cemetery. The group is comprised of Sylvia E. Cotton and Patricia A. Taylor, who are a director and an officer for the Bank of Tucson, respectively.

But the saga continued. Norrish claims she was physically removed from the property on the day of the sale, and that she was barred from retrieving her car and other items. They included a 1993 Ford Taurus and eight pot-bellied pigs.

She was allowed to remove the pigs three days later, but one of them died. Norrish also claims the investors threw some of her remaining personal items into the pigpen during monsoon season.

Norrish says all of this was done "with the purposes of wrongfully acquiring The Pet Cemetery, acquiring its goodwill and customers, and crippling [Norrish] financially so that she could not compete with [the investors] and could not challenge [the investors'] misconduct."

She is asking Judge Kelly to void the sale and grant her quiet title to the cemetery, along with any compensatory and punitive damages. She is represented by Tucson lawyers Michael A. Fleishman and Ned Garn.