After her husband passed away, the widow went to the funeral home to arrange his funeral and burial. She paid for the complete burial services in full, before the final disposition, trusting the funeral home to handle every detail of laying her husband to rest.
On the day of the burial, family and friends processed from the church to the cemetery for the final committal. Instead of a prepared graveside, they arrived to find an empty hole of mud and water with two wooden slats laid across the opening. There was no canopy, no chairs, no tarp, and no grass, nothing set up for the family and friends who had gathered to say goodbye.
It got worse. The burial vault the widow had purchased had never been secured and delivered to the cemetery. The cemetery had to step in and provide one of its own liners. While the family and their guests watched, heavy equipment and workers opened the grave and lowered a concrete liner into the muddy hole, turning what should have been a dignified farewell into a scene of confusion and delay.
We filed suit in Dallas County. Before filing, we notified the funeral home of a claim under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and the funeral home did not respond within the time the law allows. The widow had done everything right: she chose the funeral home, paid in full ahead of time, and relied on its promise to prepare and stage the burial.
What the funeral home did not do were the basics it had been paid to do. It did not have the purchased vault at the grave. It did not set up the canopy, chairs, tarp, or grass. It did not properly prepare the grave before the family arrived, and it did not supervise the work to make sure the service it had sold could actually be carried out. The family was left to absorb the shock at the worst possible moment.
We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and negligent misrepresentation, along with violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including representing that the burial services had benefits and a quality they did not have, failing to deliver the goods and services the widow paid for, and breaching the implied warranty that the services would be performed in a good and workmanlike manner. We also pleaded that the funeral home engaged in an unconscionable course of action by promising a complete, prepared burial it failed to provide.
A family that pays in full for a dignified burial does not get an open, muddy hole and a missing vault on the day they bury their loved one. A funeral home that sells that service has to deliver it, and answer for it when it does not.
We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and negligent misrepresentation, along with violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including representing that the burial services had benefits and a quality they did not have, failing to deliver the goods and services the widow paid for, and breaching the implied warranty that the services would be performed in a good and workmanlike manner. We also pleaded that the funeral home engaged in an unconscionable course of action by promising a complete, prepared burial it failed to provide.
A family that pays in full for a dignified burial does not get an open, muddy hole and a missing vault on the day they bury their loved one. A funeral home that sells that service has to deliver it, and answer for it when it does not.
