The wrong ashes sent by a funeral home stunned an Oregon woman when she opened the container the morning of Father’s Day 2016 to spread the cremains along the coast. Then she learned some of her father's actual ashes were already scattered, and the rest buried, in a vault at a cemetery.
Now the funeral directors who blamed a labeling error face a $2.5 million lawsuit, The Oregonian reported.
Kimberly Grecco, 53, filed the lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court, charging that Crown Memorial Center, also known as Cascade Funeral Directors Inc., violated Oregon law in handling the remains of her father, Ronald M. Roark, and failed to follow adequate procedures.
According to The Oregonian, Grecco said she suffered severe emotional harm that required mental health treatment. She was prepared to scatter her father's ashes but discovered once she opened the box that the remains were from a different person.
"This has all put quite a dent in my life," Grecco said, per The Oregonian. "It's still kind of surreal to me."
KGW-TV said Roark passed away in January 2016 and Grecco hired Crown Memorial Center to cremate him, but it took the funeral home nearly a year to send her father's ashes.
Grecco said she later learned that some of her father's ashes had already been scattered by the family that had received them by mistake, unaware of what happened, The Oregonian noted. The rest of her father's ashes were buried in a vault at a cemetery. They had to be exhumed and returned to her.
"It's hard to imagine a more egregious case," Michael Fuller, Grecco's lawyer, told The Oregonian. "There needs to be greater supervision and training in this field. This is a level of a mistake should never be made."
Crown Memorial Center had apologized for the mistake and was reprimanded by the Oregon Mortuary and Cemetery Board, KGW-TV said.
In a March consent order, the funeral home acknowledged that an employee made an error in labeling, resulting in "two families receiving the wrong cremated remains," in violation of state law. The board noted that the funeral home contacted the board immediately afterwards.
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