Yes. A family may be able to sue a funeral home in Michigan when the funeral home makes a serious mistake involving a deceased loved one and that mistake causes additional emotional distress, mental anguish, humiliation, or psychological trauma.
Funeral homes are trusted to handle deceased persons with dignity, care, and respect. Families rely on funeral directors and their employees to properly identify, transport, preserve, prepare, display, cremate, and deliver their loved ones’ remains. When a funeral home violates that trust, Michigan law may provide the affected family with a legal remedy.
What Funeral-Home Mistakes May Support a Lawsuit?
Not every minor inconvenience will support a substantial lawsuit. However, a funeral home may potentially be held responsible when its conduct goes beyond a harmless error and results in the mishandling of human remains, interference with burial rights, breach of the funeral contract, or severe emotional trauma.
Examples of serious funeral-home mistakes may include presenting the wrong body during a viewing, placing the wrong person in a casket, losing a body or cremated remains, mixing one person’s ashes with another person’s ashes, cremating a person without proper authorization, burying the wrong remains, failing to properly preserve or refrigerate a body, damaging a body or casket, improperly embalming a body, or refusing to release remains without legal justification.
A claim may also arise when a funeral home conceals its mistake, gives the family false information, alters records, charges for services it did not provide, or knowingly allows a funeral or burial to proceed despite discovering that something is wrong.
Does Michigan Law Recognize Emotional-Distress Claims for Mishandled Remains?
Michigan recognizes a cause of action where a person or business intentionally, recklessly, or negligently removes, withholds, mutilates, operates upon, or otherwise improperly handles the body of a deceased person or prevents its proper burial or cremation.
In Dennis v Robbins Funeral Home, the Michigan Supreme Court recognized potential liability to a family member entitled to control the disposition of the body when the remains are intentionally, recklessly, or negligently mishandled or proper interment is prevented.
Michigan courts have also recognized that emotional-distress damages arising from the mishandling of a corpse may be recoverable without proof of a separate physical injury.
This is important because claims involving deceased remains are treated differently from many ordinary emotional-distress claims. The law recognizes that the improper treatment of a loved one’s body may itself cause profound mental anguish.
Is a Physical Injury Required?
A physical injury is not necessarily required when the claim is properly based on the mishandling of a deceased person’s remains. Michigan appellate authority recognizes that a family member may pursue emotional-distress damages arising from the mishandling of a corpse without showing resulting physical harm.
However, the legal theory under which the case is pleaded matters. A general claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress may be subject to different and more restrictive legal requirements than a claim based on mishandling a corpse, interference with burial rights, breach of contract, fraud, or intentional misconduct.
The specific claims should therefore be selected based on exactly what the funeral home did, who had authority over the remains, how the mistake was discovered, and what harm resulted.
What Must the Family Prove?
The required elements will depend on the claims asserted. Generally, the family must establish that the funeral home accepted responsibility for the deceased person’s remains, owed a legal or contractual duty, committed a wrongful act or omission, and caused damages beyond the family’s ordinary grief from the death itself.
The evidence should distinguish between the sorrow naturally caused by losing a loved one and the additional emotional trauma caused by the funeral home’s mistake.
For example, a family may suffer additional trauma after seeing the wrong body in their loved one’s clothing, discovering that their loved one was cremated against their instructions, learning that the funeral home lost the remains, or witnessing a damaged or decomposed body because the funeral home failed to properly preserve it.
Who May Bring the Lawsuit?
The person with the legal right to control the burial, cremation, or other disposition of the deceased person’s remains will generally have the strongest basis for bringing a mishandling claim.
Depending on the circumstances, that person may be the surviving spouse, an adult child, a parent, a designated funeral representative, a personal representative, or another person legally authorized to control the disposition of the remains.
Not every relative who experiences sadness will automatically have an individual claim. The court may consider the person’s relationship to the deceased, legal authority over the remains, involvement in the funeral arrangements, knowledge of the mistake, and resulting emotional injury.
Common Funeral-Home Negligence Cases
Funeral-home negligence cases may involve mistaken identity, unauthorized cremation, improper embalming, negligent storage, damaged remains, lost ashes, delayed burial, incorrect burial, failure to follow written instructions, or breach of a prepaid funeral agreement.
A lawsuit may also involve personal property that was supposed to remain with the deceased but was lost, stolen, or removed. Other cases involve funeral homes that allow a viewing to occur even though the body has not been properly prepared.
Some of the most serious cases arise when the funeral home realizes that it made a mistake but does not immediately inform the family. Concealing the mistake may worsen the emotional harm and may support additional claims based on fraud, misrepresentation, or intentional misconduct.
Can You Sue for an Unauthorized Cremation?
Potentially, yes. Cremation is irreversible. If a funeral home or crematory cremates a person without obtaining authorization from the person legally entitled to control the remains, the responsible parties may potentially be sued.
An unauthorized cremation may destroy the family’s ability to hold a viewing, conduct a traditional burial, perform religious ceremonies, obtain an independent examination, or follow the deceased person’s final wishes.
The family should preserve all cremation authorizations, contracts, emails, text messages, recorded calls, and documents showing what instructions were given.
Can You Sue if the Funeral Home Lost the Ashes?
A funeral home or crematory may potentially be liable if it loses, mislabels, improperly stores, disposes of, or delivers cremated remains to the wrong family.
Michigan regulations require funeral establishments to properly contain and identify cremated remains and to retain records concerning their release, disposition, or location.
If the funeral home claims that the ashes were delivered, transferred, buried, or released, the family should request all available chain-of-custody records, identification documents, cremation records, receipts, surveillance footage, and employee communications.
What Damages May Be Recovered?
The damages available will depend on the seriousness of the mistake, the conduct of the funeral home, and the strength of the evidence.
Potential damages may include compensation for mental anguish, humiliation, shock, anxiety, loss of sleep, depression, nightmares, psychological trauma, physical symptoms caused by distress, counseling expenses, and other related losses.
A family may also seek reimbursement for funeral expenses, cremation costs, burial expenses, replacement services, corrective burial costs, medical treatment, and services that were paid for but never properly performed. Where the funeral home’s conduct was malicious, willful, wanton, fraudulent, or deliberately indifferent to the family’s rights, additional damages may potentially be available. The availability of any specific category of damages must be evaluated under the facts and applicable Michigan law.
How Much Is a Funeral-Home Lawsuit Worth?
There is no standard settlement amount for a funeral-home mistake. The value of the case depends on the severity and duration of the misconduct, whether the remains were permanently lost or destroyed, whether the family witnessed the condition of the body, whether religious or burial rights were violated, and whether the funeral home concealed what happened.
Other important factors include the number of affected family members, the strength of the documentation, the credibility of witnesses, medical or counseling records, and the defendant’s explanation for the mistake.
A serious case involving the permanent loss of remains, an unauthorized cremation, a body mix-up, or intentional concealment may have substantially greater value than a minor administrative or scheduling error.
What Evidence Should You Preserve?
Families should immediately preserve all documents and communications relating to the funeral services. This includes the funeral contract, receipts, invoices, cremation authorizations, embalming authorizations, burial permits, photographs, videos, text messages, emails, voicemail messages, and social-media communications.
The family should identify every person who saw or heard what happened, including funeral-home employees, cemetery workers, clergy members, transport personnel, family members, friends, and other witnesses.
Write down a detailed timeline while the events are still fresh. Include dates, times, names, statements made by employees, photographs taken, and any efforts by the funeral home to explain or correct the mistake.
Original evidence should be kept in a secure location. Do not edit, crop, delete, or surrender the only copies of important photographs, videos, or documents.
Should You File a Complaint With the State of Michigan?
Michigan funeral establishments and mortuary-science professionals are licensed and regulated under Article 18 of the Michigan Occupational Code. The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs oversees funeral-establishment and mortuary-science licensing. A regulatory complaint may be appropriate, but filing an administrative complaint is not necessarily the same as filing a lawsuit. A state investigation may focus on licensing discipline and public protection rather than obtaining compensation for the family.
Before submitting detailed statements or evidence, families should consider consulting an attorney so that their civil claims and important evidence are properly protected.
How Long Do You Have to Sue?
Michigan law imposes deadlines on civil lawsuits. The applicable deadline may depend on whether the claim is characterized as negligence, mishandling of a corpse, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, breach of contract, or another cause of action.
The deadline may also depend on when the mistake occurred, when it was discovered, who is bringing the claim, and whether any defendant is a governmental entity.
Families should not assume that they have several years to act. Funeral-home records, surveillance footage, employee schedules, telephone recordings, and other evidence may be lost or destroyed long before the legal deadline expires.
Speak With a Michigan Funeral-Home Mistake Lawyer
A funeral home’s mistake can turn an already painful loss into a lasting and traumatic experience. Families deserve honest answers when their loved one’s remains have been lost, damaged, misidentified, improperly prepared, wrongfully cremated, or otherwise mishandled.
If a funeral home’s mistake caused you or your family severe emotional distress, you may have the right to pursue compensation under Michigan law.
Contact Advanta Law Firm for a confidential case review. We can investigate what happened, identify the responsible parties, preserve important evidence, and determine whether you have a claim against the funeral home, crematory, cemetery, transportation company, or another responsible business.
Free Consultation: 248-281-6299