Legal Squabble Over The Gipper's Body

(AP)  A legal squabble over the exhumation of Notre Dame football hero George Gipp's remains may have hit a dead end.

The Michigan Court of Appeals last month refused to hear an appeal of a Houghton County judge's decision to reject a lawsuit filed by two men who say they are distant cousins of Gipp.

Ron Gipp and Karl Gipp, who live near George Gipp's boyhood home in the Upper Peninsula, sued in November 2007.

The previous month, his body had been removed from a cemetery near Laurium to determine whether he had fathered a child out of wedlock before dying in 1920.

DNA testing produced negative results.

The lawsuit accused those responsible for the exhumation of trespassing. Other family members said the testing was justified.

Gipp died at the age of 25 of a throat infection, days after leading Notre Dame to a win.

In 1940, Ronald Reagan played the doomed football star in "Knute Rockne: All-American" in which he wanted his teammates to "win just one for the Gipper."

[floriditynow]

The Tampa Bay teenage girl that tried to ask FL gov Crist if he was her father didn''t get very far. Nowhere, in fact. Her birth mother claimed he was her father and 17 yrs ago he signed her adoption papers. So now, it looks as though she''ll have to wait for Crist to die, and then, with the help of some dirt bag author, dig him up for the big DNA test - and later the big pay off from the book sales. Of course, the legal firewall would first have to be breached - payoffs inside of religious grounds should do the trick. Cremation would ruin everything.

[jbs6]

WTS!?!

A story about Jane Goodall will probably get a still shot of "Bed Time for Bonzo! Aargh!

[coppertales]

Google "the mining journal.net" and you will get a much better story on this topic...

[catlady1412]

It would have been nice to see a picture of the real Gipper and not Ronald Reagan, since the story is about the real Gipper. I am guessing from the sparse details of the story that the person questioning whether he fathered a child out of wedlock is actually that person or a descendant of that person and wants to know if he is their father? The article is missing most of the details that make it a decent story, such as who wants the exhumation, why and what rulings and precedents exist for this kind of exhumation. The Big Bopper was exhumed for a far lesser reason, the rather questionable rumor that he was shot by Buddy Holly on the doomed flight even though somewhere in the police reports there was a mention of the person who found the gun in the field firing it to see if it worked before turning it in to the sheriff''s office. Did anybody try to block that exhumation, for example?

[newsjunky5]

Dig up The Gipper? Why not? The Republicans have been digging up Ronald Reagan for years.

[flolake]

FloridityNow :

Your troll ways aren unamusing.

[flolake]

morphndol8 :

You are a sick troll.

[floriditynow]

Tomb raiders, gone wild. Who else can we dig up? This judgment literally opens a can of worms. And what evidence is there that the entire stupid and botched exhumation of The Gipp wasn''t simply an elaborate ruse to steal his bones? Where''s the femur, used for the DNA sampling, now? Were the rest of the bones actually re-buried or are they now in the hands of the Skull And Bones Club at Yale, or some weird collector, like Michael Jackson? Maybe sportswriter Bynum is using the Gipper''s skull as a paper weight.

[floriditynow]

Tomb raiders, gone wild. Who else can we dig up? This judgment literally opens a can of worms. And what evidence is there that the entire stupid and botched exhumation of The Gipp wasn''t simply an elaborate ruse to steal his bones? Where''s the femur, used for the DNA sampling, now? Were the rest of the bones actually re-buried or are they now in the hands of the Skull And Bones Club at Yale, or some weird collector, like Michael Jackson? Maybe sportswriter Bynum is using the Gipper''s skull as a paper weight.

[floriditynow]

Tomb raiders, gone wild. Who else can we dig up? This judgment literally opens a can of worms. And what evidence is there that the entire stupid and botched exhumation of The Gipp wasn''t simply an elaborate ruse to steal his bones? Where''s the femur, used for the DNA sampling, now? Were the rest of the bones actually re-buried or are they now in the hands of the Skull And Bones Club at Yale, or some weird collector, like Michael Jackson? Maybe sportswriter Bynum is using the Gipper''s skull as a paper weight.