After her son passed away in June 2023, a mother turned to the funeral home in Baytown to embalm him and prepare him for his visitation and funeral. She arranged and paid for an open-casket service so that family and friends could see him and say goodbye.
When she and her family arrived for the scheduled visitation, they were met with something no parent should ever have to see. Her son’s body had not been properly preserved, maggots were coming from his nose during the visitation, and she was forced to close the casket in front of the people who had come to mourn him.
The next morning, the funeral home assured her the problem had been remedied. It had not. When she viewed her son again, his face was disfigured and his body was surrounded by flies and giving off a foul smell. The open-casket goodbye she had planned for her son was impossible, and she buried him with the casket closed.
The funeral home operates under the Dignity Memorial brand and is part of Service Corporation International, the largest funeral and cemetery company in North America. A family choosing a national brand like this is paying for the expertise and resources that brand promises. The most basic part of that promise, properly embalming and preserving a body so a family can have the open-casket service they arranged, was not kept.
The condition the family found at the visitation is not what proper embalming and care look like; it is what they are meant to prevent. And when the funeral home was given an overnight chance to make it right, it assured the mother the problem was fixed when it was not, leaving her to discover the same failure a second time. The petition alleges the funeral home failed to properly care for and preserve the body, caused severe disfigurement during and after embalming, and failed to train and supervise the staff responsible for that care.
We filed suit in Harris County and brought claims for negligence and negligent misrepresentation and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including representing that the funeral home’s services had qualities and benefits they did not have, breaching the implied warranty that the services would be performed in a good and workmanlike manner, and violating the standards for funeral establishments under the Texas Occupations Code. We made the funeral home account for failing to preserve the body, for the disfigurement caused during and after embalming, for assuring the family the problem was fixed when it was not, and for failing to train and supervise the people responsible for the son’s care.
A mother who pays a funeral home to prepare her son for an open-casket goodbye is entitled to exactly that. Forcing her to close the casket, twice, and to bury her son without the service she planned is the opposite of the care this funeral home promised, and it had to answer for it.
We filed suit in Harris County and brought claims for negligence and negligent misrepresentation and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including representing that the funeral home’s services had qualities and benefits they did not have, breaching the implied warranty that the services would be performed in a good and workmanlike manner, and violating the standards for funeral establishments under the Texas Occupations Code. We made the funeral home account for failing to preserve the body, for the disfigurement caused during and after embalming, for assuring the family the problem was fixed when it was not, and for failing to train and supervise the people responsible for the son’s care.
A mother who pays a funeral home to prepare her son for an open-casket goodbye is entitled to exactly that. Forcing her to close the casket, twice, and to bury her son without the service she planned is the opposite of the care this funeral home promised, and it had to answer for it.
