Collision
Who controls the foundation
- The sides
- Favored: cemetery operators, who retain the foundation-preparation revenue the rules permit. Harmed: monument dealers, who bear the fees the rules restrict.
- In dispute
- A narrow band: whether a specific fee is legitimate cost recovery or a discriminatory charge that exists to make an outside monument uneconomic. Both sides accept the same rules and disagree about where a given fee falls within them.
- Not in dispute
- The rule itself. Neither side is asking to change it — the fight is over enforcement, which is not self-executing federally.
- What it means for a coalition
- The collision most directly implicating this platform's owner — which is why the disclosure sits at the top of this page. It is also the most tractable: because the disagreement is about application rather than the rule, publishing the rule accurately serves both sides, and in Michigan the dealers' remedy is a complaint to the commissioner (MCL 456.538), not a lawsuit.