Is a $50 million penalty too high for a mistaken cremation?
Arranging the disposition of a loved one’s remains can be heartbreaking, and perhaps nothing could make it worse than for a funeral home to mistakenly cremate a loved one’s body.
Morticians, though, wrongfully cremate bodies with startling frequency, so often that a small specialist legal industry has emerged. A typical settlement is around $1 million, according to American Funeral Director Magazine, which ran a story last year on how to avoid putting the wrong body in the incinerator.
Charles and Heather Hauboldt, the owners of Grace Funeral Home in Victoria, probably wish they had taken that advice about properly tagging and tracking bodies, because the family of Roberta Salazar has hired a highflying litigator, who is demanding $50 million.
That’s enough to buy the 50 most expensive homes in Victoria and still have plenty for property taxes.
Attorney Willie Gary, though,
likes to attract attention. The press release from Florida-based Gary, Williams, Parenti, Watson & Gary demanding $50 million earned him television and newspaper interviews, and of course, a mention in this column.
I asked Gary, who has a track record of winning huge judgments, what makes him think this case is worth $50 million. Because frankly, this brand of litigation gives plaintiff ’s attorney a bad name and encourages lawmakers to impose tort reform.
“I think $50 million may not be enough,” he told me. “This is not an average case where they just made a mistake. We feel real strong about the potential for a major blockbuster suit.”
Roberta Salazar told her family that she wanted an open-casket funeral and to wear the dress her husband gave her for their 40th wedding anniversary. The family hired Grace Funeral Home to fulfill her wishes.
The family says a funeral director later informed them that Roberta’s body was too decomposed for an open casket service. Then another family informed the Salazars that someone from Grace had recently retrieved their urn from its burial plot because an employee said it held the wrong ashes.
Gary said that is how the Salazars learned that Grace had cremated Roberta. The lawsuit alleges that Grace tried to cover up the mistake, triggering punitive damages.
“When they were saying that the body was decomposing, there was no body. That body was off with another family,” Gary said. “They really went overboard with their deception and their lying.”
Attorneys for Grace Funeral Home declined to answer questions, but in a statement they denied that Grace deceived the Salazars.
“Grace Funeral Home deeply regrets the mistake in cremating Ms. Salazar’s body,” it said. “After it discovered what had happened, Grace Funeral Home promptly investigated, notified the family and apologized.”
Grace Funeral Home’s
“We feel real strong about the potential for a major blockbuster suit.”
Attorney Willie Gary
website says it is owned by the Hauboldts, which if true, would significantly diminish the odds of collecting $50 million. Gary said his team is investigating whether a national chain may own a portion of Grace and whether the funeral home has a pattern of negligent behavior.
“Rather than them tagging bodies and labeling bodies, we have inside people who worked there who say they didn’t do it,” Gary said. “Who knows … how many families buried ashes that were not their family member. How many were lied to and told to have a closed casket funeral because they screwed up?”
Which reveals the real reason for the media splash: “I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a class-action lawsuit out of this,” he added.
To launch a class action suit, the attorneys need to find more consumers who suffered from the same negligence. Attorneys make a lot of money from class action suits, even if the payout per individual is relatively small.
“The amount of damages a lawyer seeks when filing a lawsuit could as easily be $5 million as $500 million. In many cases, it is a number that is calculated to make headlines,” said Luke Gilman, a trial lawyer in the Houston office of Jackson Walker who is not involved in the case. “A $50 million claim is hard to tie to any particular treatment or specific injury that the family suffered.”
If you can find 50 people to join a class action lawsuit, then $50 million makes sense. The problem would be collecting that much from a small-town funeral home.
Filing the lawsuit, which does not mention the $50 million demand, opens the door for Gary to investigate. In Mississippi, he spent three years examining the records of the Loewen Group, a Canada-based operator of 700 funeral homes. A jury in 1996 agreed Loewen had committed widespread fraud.
The verdict: $500 million. We’ll see whether Gary is abusing the legal system, or if he’s on to something.