Foresight on 
Written by the lawyers of WRW Legal, PLLC: Wendy Russell Wiener, Lauren Pettine and Hank Thompson.
Our clients’ favorite advice to receive from us is: do nothing. It is advice we give with some regularity when circumstances call for it. But, more often our advice is to take action. I can think of no better action to highlight here than the action related to decedent identification. Throughout the summer each year I travel from convention to convention, trade show to tradeshow usually speaking on how funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories can avoid liability – both regulatorily and civilly.
My advice is always the same. The single most effective way to avoid all kinds of liability is the easiest and it’s FREE! It’s simply to slow down. I have coined the phrase “the Wendy 30” which is your reminder that everyone interacting with decedent remains, whether human or cremated, should take an extra 30 seconds when handling those remains. Just this month there’s a new lawsuit hitting the news and social media about a funeral home that released the wrong cremated remains. The right cremated remains were in the right urn and in the right place, but the employee that released the wrong set simply “grabbed the wrong urn”. The family is suing for several million dollars. That single example provides several million reasons to take an extra 30 seconds for everything that is done with decedent remains.
Another suit also filed this month, this one seeking $7,000,000, is about a decedent that was cremated in error. The family had meticulously planned interment down to the last detail. The funeral home’s spokesman is on record that the mistake happened because an employee just “grabbed the wrong remains”. Thirty seconds would have prevented the error, the lawsuit and what may be the end of the family run funeral home.
A pending lawsuit for $7,000,000 (or even less) is certain to be an impediment to selling your business if that’s your aim. It is certain to increase to your insurance premiums. It is certain to diminish your reputation within your community. It is certain to initiate an investigation by your state regulator. Reduced to essentials, a lawsuit like that (and sadly this is a much lower starting demand than many others we’ve seen) is most certainly a disaster for you and your staff.
As our society incentivizes speed causing many to rush through as much of our work as we can. I urge you, however, to take the time to meet with your staff often to demand that they slow down during decedent care. Imagine how the defendant funeral home owners wish they had done that.
“The Wendy 30” – a FREE problem preventer!