Funeral home abuse is something you hear about rarely. A lot of people don’t even want to talk about it. Can you blame them? Their loved one dies and then they are given more grief by insensitive, irresponsible and immoral funeral homes and cemeteries, who tend to forget they are providing a humanitarian service in addition to running a business. They tend to forget they are dealing with people who are in a fragile state of mind and who are grieving the loss of a loved one.
How can they forget that, you ask? Aren’t they supposed to be caring people who deal with the situation with sensitivity? Maybe, in a perfect world. The reality is that a lot of funeral homes don’t operate like that. At Bisnar Chase Personal Injury Attorneys, we’ve been appalled and disgusted by the some of the things our clients have told us. These are clients who have had horrible experiences while trying to bid their loved one a final farewell. These are clients who come to us because they are people who believe they’ve been wronged and they deserve better. And guess what? They’re absolutely right.
Take the example of this son whose father passed away on Jan. 3. The hearse picked up the body and took it to a funeral home in Orange County. The next time the family saw their loved one, his face was bloody. There was a cut on his forehead and he was bleeding! They learned later that the people who transported the deceased dropped him as they were carrying his body into the funeral home. Neither those people nor the funeral home managers bothered to clean up the wound or tell the family about it. Can you imagine how they must’ve felt? The hearse company who contracted with the funeral home said they fired the men who dropped the body, but does that make it OK? Not really.
The other case we’re dealing with is about another family’s horrific experience with a funeral home in the Los Angeles South Bay Area. The family’s 91-year-old grandmother passed away this last June and they took her remains to the mortuary. The funeral home was pricey, but somehow the family managed to come up with the $10,000 that was needed to send their grandmother off with dignity. Or that’s what they thought. Five days after the death, the family went to the mortuary for the viewing. The room where the body was placed was filled with a foul odor and buzzing with flies!
The funeral home was supposed to embalm the body, but either they had not done that or the embalming was done in a shoddy manner! And it’s not as if the family hadn’t paid them. It was an expensive funeral home that made no compromises when it came to money. When the family was wondering how to come up with the money, the funeral home manager even suggested that they hold a car wash to collect funds. But when it came to services, the family was exploited, deceived and badly shortchanged.
These are businesses that care very little about people. It’s not only bad morality but also bad business. They were paid to do a job and they did it poorly and with little or no regard for their customers. These businesses seem to only care more about profits, how best to get the most out of people and how best to manipulate these victims to benefit their business. Our clients did the right thing. They refused to take this type of unethical business practice. They hired a personal injury attorney who specializes in these cases. And we are going to go after these guys until our clients get the justice they deserve.