Rob Marcereau/Villegas, et al. v. Bayview Service Group, Inc.
A FAMILY GRIEVES AFTER A MORTUARY’S MISTAKE
After 29-year-old Hector Villegas died in a car crash, his family arranged for a brief viewing at a mortuary, to be followed by cremation. When the family showed up for the viewing, they were told that the viewing couldn’t happen because Hector had been mistakenly cremated the night before. The family was crushed. Instead of saying goodbye to Hector and having a celebration of life afterward as they had planned, they just went home, devastated. Six hours later, an employee from the mortuary showed up at their house with a box of ashes. The ashes were still hot, which made no sense to the family, since supposedly Hector had been cremated the night before. The family was deeply concerned that they had been given the wrong ashes. DNA tests on ashes are impossible, so the only thing the family had was the mortuary’s word. The family sought damages for their emotional distress caused by the missed viewing and the lingering doubt that the ashes given to them by the mortuary were truly those of their deceased loved one. The mortuary’s explanation for the warm ashes was that the remains had been kept in the oven all night and all the following day, and thus stayed warm from residual heat. Inconsistencies in the mortuary’s internal documents proved they were covering up what really happened. The document showing the time Hector’s body went into the cremation oven was clearly altered to make it appear to have been the day before the viewing; while a heavily redacted logbook stated that no cremations were performed on the day of the scheduled viewing, public records showed that the mortuary was averaging 20 cremations a day at that time. A jury awarded Hector’s mother and four siblings financial compensation for their distress, well in excess of what the mortuary had offered.