After her mother passed away in March 2024, a daughter retained the funeral home in Rayville to cremate her and paid for the services in full within days. Not long after, she received her mother’s death certificate, a document stating that the cremation had been carried out in April 2024.
But the daughter could not find out where her mother’s remains actually were, and her requests to view her mother had been refused. When she contacted the crematory named in the process directly, she was told something no family should ever hear: the crematory had never received her mother at all. There had been no cremation.
Her mother’s body had never left the funeral home. It had been left there, unrefrigerated and unattended, to deteriorate for more than a month, even as the funeral home issued paperwork certifying a cremation that had not taken place. What the daughter was told had been done with care and finality had instead been left undone, and hidden.
We are pursuing claims against the funeral home on behalf of the daughter. The most basic duties a funeral home owes are to store a body with care and dignity, to carry out the disposition the family paid for, and to tell the family the truth about what was done. Here, as pleaded, none of that happened: the body was improperly stored and left to decompose, the cremation the family paid for was never performed, and a death certificate was issued stating a cremation had occurred when it had not.
Refusing the daughter’s requests to see her mother kept the failure hidden while the body continued to deteriorate. A family that pays a funeral home to cremate their loved one has every right to expect it to actually be done, and to be told the truth, not handed a certificate papering over a body left to mold in the back of the building.
We brought claims under Louisiana law for negligence in the handling and storage of human remains, including the improper storage that allowed the body to decompose, the failure to perform the cremation the family paid for, and the failure to handle a mother’s remains with the care and dignity the law requires. We are demanding that the funeral home account for leaving a body to deteriorate for over a month and for certifying a cremation that never occurred.
A funeral home that takes a family’s mother and their payment has to do what it promised, store her with dignity until it does, and tell the family the truth. Leaving her to decompose while certifying a cremation that never happened is a betrayal the funeral home has to answer for.
We brought claims under Louisiana law for negligence in the handling and storage of human remains, including the improper storage that allowed the body to decompose, the failure to perform the cremation the family paid for, and the failure to handle a mother’s remains with the care and dignity the law requires. We are demanding that the funeral home account for leaving a body to deteriorate for over a month and for certifying a cremation that never occurred.
A funeral home that takes a family’s mother and their payment has to do what it promised, store her with dignity until it does, and tell the family the truth. Leaving her to decompose while certifying a cremation that never happened is a betrayal the funeral home has to answer for.
