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a grief California The family filed a lawsuit against San Jose funeral Home And its service director accused of shocking mishandling human remains Which turned his grief into more trauma.
According to the lawsuit, first reported abc 7A funeral director from Lima Family Erickson Memorial Chapel handed out a Father She believed that one of the bags contained her late son’s clothes. In fact his son had a part in it Brain,
The alleged discovery is a “horror that no family should ever have to endure,” the lawsuit cites. crone, reads
The lawsuit relates to the death of 27-year-old Alexander Pinon, who died at his home on May 19.
His family had signed a contract with Mortuarypaying more than $10,000 for a “full-service memorial tribute package,” which included embalming, dressing and transportation, the suit says. The family requested that he be buried in different clothes than those he was wearing at the time of his death.
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According to the legal complaint, on June 4, funeral director Anita “Annette” Singh handed Pinon’s father a bag marked for biohazardous materials, and told him it contained his son’s clothes.
Trusting the funeral professional, the father took the bag home and emptied it in his washing machine, but found that it contained human brain matter instead of clothes.
Shocked by the mixture, she removed the brain matter, which she did not know at the time was her son’s, from the washer, placed it back in the red bag, and returned it to the mortuary later that day.
The lawsuit alleges that Singh took the bag without providing any apology or explanation. Singh simply said, “I’ll take it out of here,” Habbas told ABC 7.
Alexander was buried the next day at Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery.
The lawsuit claims that weeks later, the family learned from an internal whistleblower that the bag actually contained Alexander’s brain, and that the funeral director allegedly placed it in a box and left it in the funeral home’s courtyard for about two and a half months after mixing it. Another employee eventually discovered it and was “overwhelmed by the smell” or found a “rotting human brain,” ABC 7 reported.
“Don’t get me wrong, mistakes can be made,” the family’s attorney, Samar Habbas, told the outlet, “but what cannot happen, and what should not happen, is that you hide your mistakes, and that’s what the funeral home did here.”
According to the lawsuit, cited by KRON, the treatment of Alexander’s remains and the lack of transparency have caused the family “extreme emotional distress, trauma and mental anguish.”
It says, “Finding your own child’s brain matter in the washing machine and then taking it out… is a horrific incident that no family should ever have to endure.”
The lawsuit also accuses the funeral home, the mortuary’s Santa Clara location and Singh of negligence, fraud, breach of contract and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Independent The Lima Family has contacted Erickson Memorial Chapel and its parent company, Service Corporation International, which operates the chapel under the Dignity Memorial brand, for comment.
In a statement to ABC 7, a spokesperson for SCI said: “Due to active litigation, we will not comment on this matter.”
The family is also exploring plans to reunify Alexander’s brain with the rest of his remains as part of efforts to deal with the aftereffects of this traumatic event, ABC 7 reports.
They demand a jury trial in this case.