Indiana--Much as she tries, Linda Anderson-Hardwick can't forget what she saw, heard and smelled that day five years ago at a Greenwood cemetery. Her brother's cherry wood casket, interred more than a year earlier, broke apart as workers removed it from a mausoleum vault. A Marion Superior Court jury found Forest Lawn Memory Gardens negligent Wednesday and awarded $300,000 to four members of William Joseph Henry's family for their anguish.Anderson-Hardwick, 57, said the money would mean little if another family ever had to endure the same shock.

"It's been horrific," she said, still bridling as she remembered the black mold that covered a blanket. "Now, maybe my brother can rest."

After the verdicts were read, the family received an apology from Ronald Robertson, a vice president of Memory Gardens Management Corp., Forest Lawn's owner. He assured them Henry would be looked after.

Henry, 49, a retired car dealership executive in Indianapolis and Martinsville, battled terminal liver cancer before his death in March 2002.

But a mausoleum chosen by his family was under construction, prompting a rare transfer 17 months later. Several members gathered in August 2003 to watch workers move the casket from its temporary vault.

Jim Young, an Indianapolis attorney who represented Henry's son, Christopher, said the employees violated the cemetery's policies. They didn't use a tray to guide the casket out or cover it with a sheet.

The body had decomposed, and the casket's handles broke off the casket, sending it to the ground.

An odor enveloped the family, Young said; members saw what they thought were outlines of body parts beneath a covering inside the casket.

"It really was an attack on their senses," Young said.

He argued the case alongside Danville attorney Betty Harrington, who represented the three other plaintiffs.

After a two-day trial in Judge Gerald Zore's courtroom, the jury returned with its verdicts in half an hour.

It awarded $70,000 each to Anderson-Hardwick and Henry's father, William James Henry; and $80,000 each to Christopher Henry and his cousin, Robert McAdams.

An attorney for Memory Gardens declined to comment on the verdicts.

The current owners bought the cemetery after the casket incident. Earlier this year, Memory Gardens was placed in receivership after Marion County prosecutors accused the current owners of raiding the trusts of Forest Lawn and other cemeteries; that case still is pending in court.

During this week's trial, Henry's family members described their anxiety and distress -- and images that will never go away.

"I sure want my salvation," Anderson-Hardwick said, "but I wouldn't want anyone to see me like that."

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