Damages for Caskets Bouncing Down the Highway, Burial Blunders, and More Funeral Frights By William A. Drennan
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William A. Drennan is a professor at Southern Illinois University Law School and a former editor for the Books & Media Committee of the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section of the ABA.
By William A. Drennan
Published in Probate & Property, Volume 36, No 3 © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.
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May/June 2022
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The Law of Halloween Nightmares
alloween lore abounds with tales of the disrespected dead seeking retribution. Debate on the existence of wrathful wraiths is spirited. But surviving family members frequently recover money damages in court for their own mental and emotional distress arising from the indignities visited upon the dead because of funeral or burial blunders and bloopers. A decedent was not only late for his own funeral, but completely missed it, because of a botched embalming job. Seventy-five to 100 friends gathered inside for the funeral, but the decedent was left outside because of the foul stench. The jury presumably pondered the family’s ignominy from their ancestor’s malodorous end. In 2012, a Michigan family received $80,000 in settlement after the casket fell from the hearse and grandma rolled out onto the road in front of the mourners on the way from the funeral home to the church. Members of another decedent’s family nearly fainted when their ancestor’s casket was opened, revealing that only the top half was embalmed. Elsewhere, a hearse collided with a railway train, scattering the decedent’s remains, and nobody from the funeral home bothered to “pick up the pieces.” In a rather dramatic protest of low wages, the driver and
