When her mother passed away on Christmas Day, a daughter turned to the funeral home in Arlington. The arrangement was straightforward: embalm her mother and transfer her to a funeral home in Madison, Mississippi for the service and final disposition. The daughter signed the authorization to embalm that same day, relying on the funeral home to do what it had agreed to do.
It didn’t. Texas requires a body to be embalmed or refrigerated within 24 hours. The funeral home waited 192 hours, eight days, before embalming her mother. Because it failed to embalm in time, the body was never prepared for the transfer the family had arranged, and the daughter was forced to cancel her mother’s scheduled service.
The delay did more than upend the schedule. Left unembalmed for eight days, the body decayed and became disfigured. The family had planned to say goodbye with an open casket; the condition of the body left them no choice but to close it.
We are pursuing claims against the funeral home and its corporate owner. The funeral home presents itself to the public like a local, family-run business, but it is one of roughly 1,900 funeral homes, cemeteries, and crematories owned by a national funeral conglomerate and marketed through that company’s brand network. Unless a family reads the fine print, they would have no way of knowing the “local” funeral home they chose is actually run by a web of out-of-state companies.
Whatever the corporate structure behind it, the duty is the same: embalm timely, preserve the body for the service the family arranged, and handle a mother’s remains with care. Waiting eight days to embalm, eight times the 24-hour limit, is not a close call. It is the kind of failure that turns a family’s planned farewell into a canceled service and a closed casket.
We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence, for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and for failing to perform the services in a good and workmanlike manner, including the representations that the body would be embalmed timely and preserved for an open-casket service, and the reckless disregard reflected in letting a body sit for 192 hours against a 24-hour standard. We are demanding that the funeral home and its corporate parent account for the delay, the disfigurement, and the goodbye the family lost.
A family that hands a funeral home their mother and a clear task, embalm her and bring her home for the service, has the right to expect it done, and done in time. A funeral home that lets eight days pass instead has to answer for it, no matter how large the company behind the local sign.
We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence, for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and for failing to perform the services in a good and workmanlike manner, including the representations that the body would be embalmed timely and preserved for an open-casket service, and the reckless disregard reflected in letting a body sit for 192 hours against a 24-hour standard. We are demanding that the funeral home and its corporate parent account for the delay, the disfigurement, and the goodbye the family lost.
A family that hands a funeral home their mother and a clear task, embalm her and bring her home for the service, has the right to expect it done, and done in time. A funeral home that lets eight days pass instead has to answer for it, no matter how large the company behind the local sign.
