A San Antonio family members has sued a funeral property, professing the facility failed to decide on up their father’s physique from a hospital for cremation, so it was deemed abandoned and Bexar County buried him in a pauper’s grave.
The plaintiffs are daughters of Arthur Martinez, who was 83 when he died on June 28 from troubles of COVID-19 at Northeast Baptist Clinic.
“We are grief stricken about the gatherings bordering our father’s cremation, and how the arrangements we manufactured were not honored,” the loved ones claimed in a statement released by their lawyer, Jason Hoelscher. “We desperately search for to satisfy his needs concerning his remains, and we are hopeful this litigation can avoid other folks from encountering our pain and reduction.”
The daughters, Veronica Martinez, Maria Martinez, Victoria Gonzales and Judy Esparza, bought cremation and funeral solutions on July 6 from the defendants, Heart of Texas Cremations San Antonio, Economical Funerals, and Javier R. Reyes, in accordance to the go well with, submitted Feb. 23 in the 224th Civil District Court docket.
But the funeral property “intentionally, recklessly and/or negligently failed to comply with its contractual obligation and promise to secure and sustain care, custody and command of the remains of Arthur Martinez at all times,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs also accuse Reyes, who was “acting as agent and on behalf of the remaining defendants” when he instructed household associates that their father’s overall body experienced been secured from the clinic, that his account at the funeral household was “paid in comprehensive, and that the cremation of Arthur Martinez would quickly observe,” the lawsuit states.
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But that did not materialize, in accordance to the lawsuit, which seeks a jury demo and financial damages of far more than $1 million..
“Defendants in no way picked up the Decedent, and his overall body was in the long run declared as a circumstance of household abandonment by Bexar County, and Arthur Martinez was buried by the county,” the lawsuit states.
The burial “was expressly contrary to the needs of the Plaintiffs, who had contracted with Defendants for cremation solutions for their father,” it states.
Hoelscher stated the relatives continue to doesn’t know where the physique is.
“We are making an attempt to confirm location so we can safe the remains,” he said in an e-mail.
The county maintains documents for pauper burials, which are accomplished for households who are unable to afford funeral providers, or for deceased individuals whose identities are not recognized, stated David Marquez, the Bexar County economic and local community development director.
“We have records,” he reported. “We know who they are and wherever they have been buried.”
A particular person who answered the telephone at Heart of Texas Cremations took a in-depth information trying to find remark on the lawsuit, but the phone was not returned.
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