A Wisconsin woman is suing a Rochester, Minn., funeral home and Mayo Clinic after a mix-up lead to the wrongful cremation of her husband who was supposed to be viewed and buried after he died last year.
"It was a little after four o'clock and I got a phone call and they started saying they had mixed up his body and he was cremated, and I just started screaming," said Jennifer Huber, wife of cremated husband Tony Huber.
As detailed by the lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, the tragic series of events began May 10, 2015. At the time, 40-year-old Tony was with Jennifer when he hit his head after falling while walking up a group of stairs in their basement.
"I didn't think he was hurt. He didn't think he was hurt. He talked and he went to bed," Jennifer explained.
He didn't wake up the following morning and was taken to Mayo Clinic to be treated. However, when doctors failed to save him, that was the true beginning of Jennifer's nightmare - and the lawsuit.
"My phone rings," said Jennifer, recalling a call she got five days after Tony's death, "and they started saying, 'I'm terribly sorry. We mixed your husband, and he was cremated,' and I just lost it. I just went berserk."
As it turns out, after Tony's body was taken to the morgue at Mayo Clinic, it was moved from one spot to another without being documented. As a result, when Ranfranz & Vine funeral home employees arrived to pick up another body, they wound up mistakenly taking Tony's instead.
What made the incident particularly unfortunate was that beyond being deprived of being able to say goodbye one last time, Tony himself had reportedly stated that he wanted a conventional burial, referring to cremation as burning.
"I, literally, thought they burned his soul," Jennifer described. "He never ever wanted to be cremated. He said, 'I would never want to be burned like that.' He called it burned."
In light of the mistake, both Mayo Clinic and Ranfranz & Vine issued statements to the media. In part, Mayo said that the staff continues to express sympathy and condolences to the family, adding "we continue to work with them in a transparent manner on this issue." Meanwhile, Ranfranz & Vine said in part that it fully appreciates the gravity of the situation and will review what happened.
In the meantime, the family, who had to settle on burying Tony's ashes in a coffin about a quarter mile away from their family farm, said they want to be compensated for the mistake. They're allegedly seeking $75,000 in damages from both defendants, as well as attorney fees and other further relief as the court deems just and proper. A court date hasn't been set yet.
