In August 2024, a Tatum family lost their young daughter. They arranged her funeral and graveside burial through the funeral home in Henderson, with the grave to be opened by the cemetery at the cemetery in Tatum. The day began as it should have, a mass at the chapel, a procession to the cemetery, and a graveside service to say goodbye.
When the covering was pulled back from the grave, the family could see immediately that the hole was too small. The casket was longer than the grave, and the shape was wrong. The pallbearers tried to lower the casket and it would not fit. The family was assured the grave was large enough, but when the casket was forced down, it still would not go.
Workers tried to widen the hole and failed. The casket would not fit on the next attempt either. With the service stalled and the family standing over an open grave that was too small for their own child, family members took the shovels and began digging the grave larger themselves, in their funeral clothes, at the graveside, until the casket could finally be forced into the ground. The closure the family came for never happened.
We filed suit in Gregg County against both the funeral home and the cemetery service that opened the grave. The casket had been selected and ordered through the funeral home, which had the dimensions; the grave was opened by the cemetery service before the family ever arrived. Yet when the family reached the graveside, the grave was plainly too small for the casket that everyone knew was coming.
The most basic part of a graveside burial is opening a grave that fits the casket. Here it was not done. No one measured against the casket before the family arrived, no one corrected it in time, and the failure fell on the family in the worst possible moment, leaving them to finish the job with shovels at their own daughter’s burial.
We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act against both the funeral home and the cemetery service. We are making them produce their records and account, on the record, for opening a grave too small to hold the casket they were trusted to bury, and for leaving the family to dig it larger themselves.
A family should never have to take up a shovel and dig their own child’s grave because the people they hired and trusted opened it to the wrong size.
We brought claims for negligence, gross negligence, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act against both the funeral home and the cemetery service. We are making them produce their records and account, on the record, for opening a grave too small to hold the casket they were trusted to bury, and for leaving the family to dig it larger themselves.
A family should never have to take up a shovel and dig their own child’s grave because the people they hired and trusted opened it to the wrong size.
