By Adeleye Kunle
A family is suing a funeral home in New Jersey for $50 million after discovering another woman’s body inside their mother’s casket, TrackNews reports.
When the family of Kyung Ja Kim gathered for an open-casket funeral for the 93-year-old and noticed the woman inside the casket was “so much younger looking,” they knew something was wrong.
In a lawsuit filed on Monday, July 25, Kummi Kim claims she told the funeral director that the person inside the casket did not resemble her mother, and they insisted there was no mistake.
The funeral director “responded with a very clear expression of denial and dismay over the question as if Plaintiff Kummi did not appreciate a different appearance after death,” according to the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the daughter assumed her mother’s different appearance was due to the embalming process, mortuary makeup, and fake hair.
Only after the casket was halfway into the ground did funeral home staff realize they had mistakenly placed Whaja Kim’s, 70, body inside the casket.
The lawsuit accuses the Central Funeral Home of New Jersey and Blackley Funeral Home and Cremation Services of “negligence” in the switch-up, which could have been avoided had the funeral home properly tagged the bodies.
If the family wins the lawsuit, they intend to donate the proceeds to two churches that were important to their mother.
