The family lost their young son in November 2021. The next day, his parents went to the funeral home in Weatherford to arrange his funeral and burial. They agreed on a visitation, a funeral the following day at a local church, and a graveside burial, and the funeral home agreed to publish his obituary in time to invite the community.
The obituary was the first thing to slip. The father sent it in a full day before the deadline the funeral home had set. When the family later asked, they learned the funeral home had not published it, and that the earliest it could run was the day of the visitation itself.
The day before the burial, the family met the funeral director at the cemetery and showed him the plot. He began digging the grave himself. The next morning, the morning of the funeral, they returned to find the grave only about eighteen inches deep, nowhere near deep enough for a casket, with no tent, no chairs, no tarp, and nothing else set up for a service. The director assured them it would be ready in time, telling the family, “I have a shovel. I came prepared.”
It was not ready. When the funeral procession arrived at noon, the grave still was not fully dug and nothing had been staged. After the graveside service, the casket could not be lowered. Family members offered to dig it themselves before the funeral home’s president arrived, sent the director away, and called for someone else to finish. A grave digger finally arrived around 1:15 p.m., but when the casket was placed in the grave, it was turned 180 degrees and set facing the wrong direction. For roughly an hour and a half, the child’s casket sat out in the open while the family waited.
We filed suit in Parker County. The funeral home that took this family’s money holds itself out as an experienced, licensed funeral provider, its president a licensed funeral director and embalmer for more than thirty years. Yet it failed at the most basic tasks it had agreed to perform: digging the grave, opening and closing it properly, staging the cemetery, and publishing the obituary on time.
This was not a small clerical error. A grieving family stood at their child’s service with no grave to lower him into, watched his casket sit in the open for an hour and a half, and saw it finally placed in the ground facing the wrong way.
We brought claims for negligence, negligence per se, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Texas Occupations Code governing funeral directing. We made the funeral home account for an unready grave, a missed obituary, an unstaged service, and a casket buried facing the wrong direction, on the day a family laid their child to rest.
When a family hands a funeral home the burial of their child, getting the grave dug and the casket placed correctly is not a courtesy. It is the entire job.
We brought claims for negligence, negligence per se, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Texas Occupations Code governing funeral directing. We made the funeral home account for an unready grave, a missed obituary, an unstaged service, and a casket buried facing the wrong direction, on the day a family laid their child to rest.
When a family hands a funeral home the burial of their child, getting the grave dug and the casket placed correctly is not a courtesy. It is the entire job.
