Tort Law

Man sues funeral home after wife's casket somehow exits concrete vault and floats away in flood

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When Richard Lee got a call telling him that his wife’s casket had floated about 100 yards from her Texas burial site because of recent flooding, he thought there must be some mistake.

She was laid to rest in 2007 in a concrete vault, so how could that be possible? Nonetheless, it was true and Lee was asked to pay a new, reduced fee, in addition to the $11,000 cost of the 2007 funeral for reburial, the Houston Chronicle reports.

That led to a negligence suit by Lee against the Robinson Funeral Home in Silsbee, Texas, seeking not only reimbursement for reburial but damages for mental anguish.

“Clearly something went wrong here,” Lee’s lawyer, Annie McAdams, told the newspaper. “Bodies are not supposed to come up.”

The funeral home declined to comment.

KHOU also has a story.

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