The family’s daughter passed away in Tennessee in July 2023. A Memphis mortuary embalmed her body and shipped it to a funeral home in Pueblo, Colorado, where her family would hold her funeral. The mortuary shipped her in two boxes: one held her embalmed body, and the other held her internal organs. Neither box was labeled.
When the boxes arrived, the Colorado funeral home called the mother and asked her to come pick up her daughter’s personal effects. It handed her a box and told her that was what was inside. She brought it home and opened it expecting her daughter’s clothes and belongings. Instead, she found a plastic bag filled with her daughter’s internal organs.
Horrified, she called the funeral home. Its response was to tell her to put the box outside of her home “for sanitary purposes.” She could not bring herself to go near it again. Her other daughter, the decedent’s sister, had to come to the house to remove the box. Both women carry that image with them still.
We filed suit in Shelby County, Tennessee, where the mishandling began. Tennessee’s rules for funeral directors and embalmers require a mortuary to properly maintain and label a decedent’s body in its care, and the Memphis mortuary shipped a body and its internal organs across the country in two boxes with no labels at all. The Colorado funeral home that received them then released one of those boxes to the family without ever checking what was inside, telling a grieving mother it held her daughter’s personal effects.
Two licensed funeral providers each had one basic duty: know what is in the box before it reaches a mother’s hands. A label from one, or a single look inside from the other, and this never happens. They did neither.
We brought claims against both companies for negligence, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and willful and knowing violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, and we are pursuing punitive damages. We are making the mortuary account for shipping an unlabeled box of human organs, and the funeral home account for handing that box to a mother without ever opening it.
No mother should ever open a box expecting her daughter’s belongings and find part of her daughter inside.
We brought claims against both companies for negligence, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and willful and knowing violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, and we are pursuing punitive damages. We are making the mortuary account for shipping an unlabeled box of human organs, and the funeral home account for handing that box to a mother without ever opening it.
No mother should ever open a box expecting her daughter’s belongings and find part of her daughter inside.
